2800 E3 for Sale in SD

Yeah, I read cloth seats and “nice little Euro” and made an assumption. Photos weren’t working right.

Didn’t know US spec cars got cloth seats. Just early ones?
 
AustinOski said:
Yeah, I read cloth seats and “nice little Euro” and made an assumption. Photos weren’t working right.

Didn’t know US spec cars got cloth seats. Just early ones?
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Hoffman could have brought in both but Canadian cars often had cloth seats and use the same vin range.
 
I bought a '71 2800 sedan shortly after the Bavarias came out. It was leftover and a dealer who was a few hundred miles away gave a pretty good discount on it. Only real difference I could find between that 2800 and the Bavarias that made it to our local dealership was the 2800 had full leather upholstery while the Bavaria had vinyl. Never saw a '70 2800 at that time, so don't know whether they had fabric upholstery. The 2500's probably had either fabric or vinyl.

As I recall from the automotive magazine articles I was reading in that era, the Bavaria was just a re-badged 2500 with the 2.8 engine. The articles postulated that BMW did this re-badging to get away from the US consumer's opinion that the B in BMW stood for British!!

Gary
 
There were no 71 2800s in the US, Hoffman asked BMW to decontent the 2800 which cost as much as a Cadillac for 1971 and the Bavaria was born. I think the Brit angle is urban myth.
 
What's not a myth is many people still had no idea what they were. My dad was buying a business in the mid 70's and was driving a 3.0s. He drove the seller to dinner one night. They guy asked, "What's a BMW?". My dad said, "Oh, it's German. Like a Volkswagen." He didn't want to say Mercedes, so he could cry poor during the negotiations.
 
AustinOski said:
What's not a myth is many people still had no idea what they were. My dad was buying a business in the mid 70's and was driving a 3.0s. He drove the seller to dinner one night. They guy asked, "What's a BMW?". My dad said, "Oh, it's German. Like a Volkswagen." He didn't want to say Mercedes, so he could cry poor during the negotiations.
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I don't doubt that at all, I just mean BMW didn't choose Bavaria to avoid that confusion. They didn't rename e9s or 2002s.
 
@HB Chris - I agree with you, didn't mean to imply otherwise. Everything I've read says the Bavaria name was just a general marketing thing. We have two E3's when I was a kid, I was very into cars and never heard the British thing.
 
I heard the British Motor Works line a couple of times in Canada in 1971. Driving my new 1600 across Canada to Banff for a conference.
 
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