Yahoo Autos BMW Z1 pair among huge Bimmer collection up for auction
An upcoming auction in Munich is unloading a large collection of BMW vehicles. Included in the lots are several seldom seen pre-war cars, a rare 2002 Cabriolet that is just one of 200, and even a few race cars. The funkiest and most un-BMW cars among them, however, are certainly a pair of Z1 roadsters. You know, the ones with the disappearing doors and interchangeable plastic body panels.
Made from 1989-91, the Z1 can be seen as the predecessor to the Z3 and, subsequently, the Z4. Both have "Z" in the name and both are roadsters, but that's where the similarities end. Whereas BMW built nearly 280,000 Z3 roadsters (and about 17,000 more clownshoe coupes), the total production run of the Z1 ended at after just 8,000 units.
The Z1 was the product of the then newly-formed BMW Technik division, established in the 1980s to research cutting-edge technologies. As such, it was more like a concept than a production car. Each one was hand built and only six per day rolled out of the Munich workshop. The steel monocoque was hot-dip galvanized as one structure, which BMW says increased torsional rigidity by 25% over a chassis built from separate galvanized steel pieces.
