All European manufacturers had to comply with US DOT/EPA requirements for Model Year designation. They followed the US practice of offering ‘new’ models in Aug/Sep for the following year. This made sense as we have all heard of August being the vacation month in Europe. Mercedes even followed this practice in the late 50s. As US/NA market coupes have a unique VIN range, it is easy to tell a 72 3.0CS from a 73 and 74 model. All of the US coupes had a DOT/EPA sticker to record the MY and the resulting emissions requirements, other markets did not.
When researching Gary’s 3.0CS I discovered that the first manual VIN has a May 1971 build date, likely a preproduction vehicle, the next 70 or so were built in July, another 80 or so in August, then virtually none until December 1971. All of these coupes are 1972MY. The first automatic 3.0CS wasn't built until late 1971. The one interesting fact is that since there were no 1975MY US coupes, the 74s were built up until Dec 1974. And BMWNA took over Hoffman’s distributorship in Jan 1975.