CSL curiosa

[CSL 1973]

It is always interesting to dig into the old archives of CSL info. Today, I have focused on 1973.

In Olympiastadium in Munich, the 28th of February 1973, BMW presented their Motorsport department. About 150 guests (100 journalists) were invited and BMW showed a 3.0 CSL and presented their Motorsport team drivers.

Earlier on in February the same year, Jochen Neerpasch and the Kemmler brothers (Sport psycholog Rainer and Sport leader Jürgen) took their Motorsport team to St Moritz in Switzerland for some Fahrer-tuning exercises.

There is a nice picture, taken in the snowy Swiss alps, where Jochen Neerpasch sits on the hood on a Golf CSL surrounded by his team. All nicely dressed-up in their new BMW Motorsport designed clothes collection.

Later on in 1973, the tyre company Uniroyal's press manager Hans P. Kaiser collected his Golf 3.0 CSL at the factory. The CSL was used by Uniroyal for testing high-speed tyres. The car was marked with big "Uniroyal Test" stickers and was often driven by journalists.

Cheers

 

[CSL 1973]

CSL curiosa pt 2

Jumping back to 1972 and earlier. 1972 was a very interesting year when Jochen Neerpasch and the chassis expert Martin Braungart left Ford. Both were up to set up a new competition department for BMW - Motorsport.

At an early stage Alpina become involved in the CSL development. After big success in ETCC (1970), they started to develop improvements for the CSL. Alpina raced their own cars and in parallel building racing engines for Neerpasch's work competition department.

Alpina was founded by Burkard Bovenseipen, who has made his fortune on the stock market. In the early days, Bovenseipen provided Alpina carburater kits for BMW 1500s. He started in his father's typewriter factory at Kaufbeuren (18 km from Buchloe, which is located approx 1 hour's drive from Munich).

Alpina's involvement in the CSL development was also seen on the standard CSL. Equipment such as Alpina rims (two versions) and the black steering wheel (the early CSL version before the 380 mm steering wheel from Gustav Petri AG.) are well-known CSL attributes.

Cheers

 

[pmansson]

"Sitting on the hood of a CSL"...!!!!

ok, after the picture was taken, the bent bonnet/hood could easily have been replaced, at marginal costs to BMW.
I won´t try it for my family album though.....