BMW Z3 Introduction

After the pre-War 328 and the 507 of the late 1950s, BMW had no two-seater open sports cars on its books.
That was the case until a subsidiary called BMW Technik created a roadster concept called the Z1.

BMW put it into production in 1989, and for almost every year since then it has been possible to buy a Z model of some sort. Here is the story of the Z cars that made it, and one that didn’t, in numerical order starting with Z1:

Why ‘Z’?
First, though, there’s the question of why the cars are called Z. BMW subsidiary companies have code names with two letters, and in the case of BMW Technik GmbH (founded in 1985 and renamed BMW Forschung und Technik – or Research and Technology - in 2003), those letters are ZT. The first car produced by the company was both known internally and sold to the public as the Z1.

It’s often said that the Z actually stands for the German word Zukunft, meaning ‘future’. This was not the original meaning, but it has become accepted as an alternative, and BMW Group Classic is happy with both.

BMW Z1
Apart from its unadventurous 168bhp 2.5-litre six-cylinder engine, the Z1 was quite radical for a BMW of the late 1980s, with removable plastic body panels, underbody aerodynamics and multilink rear suspension. What most people, noticed, however, were the downward-retracting doors. The car could be driven with them down, though whether this was legal depended on what country you were in.

Production stopped in 1991 after 8000 examples were built, with the vast majority (81%) sold in Germany. There were to be no more BMW Z production models for four years.

BMW Z2
The Z model which didn’t happen (or at least hasn’t yet) was the Z2. For several years there was speculation about a front-wheel drive model, and possibly a 4x4 derivative, based on a MINI platform which might function as a rival to the Mazda MX-5.

Recently, however, the story has gone cold. If BMW ever does produce a Z2, it probably won’t be in the near future. PICTURE: Autocar render