Martini Racing Group 2 CSL story (long)

RonP

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This story begins with a phone call from (my now partner), Bill, aka: wsk. Bill had purchased a very rare Verona Red CSL from me with the intention of restoring it for him. The subject of Bill's phone call was that he wanted to temporarily put aside the Verona restoration and look for a Batmobile, and hinted that he wanted to look for one in Europe with the help of a few people across the pond that are privy to their whereabouts. It was my suggestion that he look here in the U.S. as, at the most it would be a five hour plane flight to look at one and the shipping would be a lot less.


I had heard that Jimmy Baker was going to thin out some of his collection, so I made a call to him. Anyone that knows Jimmy could describe him as a Southern Gentleman with a very laid back attitude. In my conversation with Jimmy, it quickly went from breaking the ice, on to his passion...CSL's. He started off with a cool slow talk, traversing into BWWs, and then the particulars of the cars he had for sale came into play and he started talking so fast and excited that there was no way I could keep up with him, so I asked Jimmy if Bill could give him a call as he would be asking the same questions.


The next phone call I received was from Bill, telling me that he not only purchased a Batmobile from Jimmy (#2275525), but he also purchased a stripped out racing CSL from him. That was almost four years ago! Since then, we have purchased #2275483 (the Rahal Bat), #2275016, and most recently the #4355016. We have had quite a run and a lot of fun with all of the cars, restoring them back to their former glory.


Meanwhile, the Martini car was just another fixture at Vintage Motorsport Group and sat in a lonely corner with a cover on it for many moons.


Finally, last September we would begin the long journey to restore this lonely shell into it's former glory and put it back on the race track, where it left off in 1979!!!


It was obvious to both of us that we couldn't do this without some support from someone that was around back in "the day" when this whole concept came to fruition. I thought it may be a long shot, but I suggested that we get in touch with Art Simonds as I know that Art was one of the first people that help develop these cars back in the early days. So, Bill contacted Art and he agreed to come aboard! What an asset he is-a proverbial walking encyclopedia of historical information.


Having Art Simonds aboard is and was truly a blessing. The next big hurdle was to find the original parts to this car as it was built to be a Group 2 CSL and once the rules changed, the sanctioning body were originally going to allow Group 5 cars into the mix. So, the car was stripped of it's Group 2 flares and Group 5 flares were added, only to have the sanctioning body change their minds. Quickly, Willi Martini went back to BMW to get an e12 chassis and everything they could scavenge off of the e9 was cast aside. I don't know the timeline, but the car was sold off to a guy that wanted a Group 5 for the street-not sure if he ever completed the task.


Fast forward. Last September, Art and Bill both met at my shop to supervise the removal of the Group 5 flares. Art was genius when he suggested we leave the top of the front fenders on and splice in new fenders below the top line. Once we surgically removed them, it was off to World Class to expose what was underneath all of the body putty, and it was pretty ugly. Then Bill set off to perform an almost impossible task to find a motor, transmission, and rear end....which he did! He found a brand new motor at Moreschi in Italy, which was a period correct 3.5L motor with Alpina slide throttle injection. An amazing feat I must say! I then nick named him "the excavator" as he can dig up stuff that you would never even think existed!!! Along with the motor, he also found a period correct Getrag 4 speed with a long throw first gear and close ratio 2,3, & 4 and a correct Alpina diff with the oil cooler!


Meanwhile, Art made chicken soup out of chicken poop, as we had no front spoiler, no rear spoiler, and a trunk full of fender flares that in no way would compliment the work we had done on the body. Art re-worked all of the flares, and Bill pulled off yet another miracle by sourcing a correct front spoiler and Art went on to work his magic with the flares, front spoiler, and built a rear wing and spoiler, complete with the rubber on his own.....more miracles and the end product was nothing short of stunning!


Bill was adamant about having the car absolutely period correct and set out to find Alpina front and rear suspension as well-I will let him chime in with his source. Then came the brakes, and once again Bill pulls off another big one.....he sourced a set of period Lockheed F1 front brakes, and we used Porsche rear calipers. Since Ireland Engineering is right next door to my shop, we got Jeff involved personally to get all of these stopping devices to fit properly and he did an amazing job, as everything on this car had to be reverse engineered, and we had very little to go on, just a few photos which really came in handy.


With Bill and Art's guidance, I was able to get Ed Haroutunian to drop all of his duties and design and build a period correct roll cage and it is perfect. Art and I wanted to update some of the design of the cage, but Bill wasn't having it. In retrospect I am glad he won out!
 

RonP

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Part two:

We spent the last two weeks, putting the motor, trans, suspension, brakes, etc. on as Bill wanted the car to be ready for the Pre-Historics this coming weekend, and I am pretty sure we will make it-barring any unforeseen problems!


So, as they say-"the rest is history". I will now add some progressive photos and say my "thank yous" and let Bill add to what I have maybe left out.


The day it arrived from Fort Payne, Alabama

martini1_zpsbae6f507.jpg
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Once the fenders were removed








Body stripped






Painted shell




Future power:





Fuel cell and sump pump





Wheels





Ready for assembly!





Art Simonds wrestling the BEAST in!





A new heart in the old girl, just like the old one!
 

RonP

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And, the back story written and researched by Bill Kincaid:

Martini 3.0 CSL 001/79


Though not as celebrated as he deserves to be, Willi Martini was a seminal figure in BMW’s history and was instrumental in its involvement with motor sport. Established in 1958 at the Nürburgring, his operations came to comprise a BMW dealership, a service facility, a race team, race car preparation facilities, a wing for the design and development of “tuning” parts for customers and even production operations for bespoke custom BMW-based race cars, ranging from 700-derived touring cars to sports prototypes to Formula 2. He was a pioneer in many technologies, including the use of fiberglass for race car bodywork. An avid driver as well as engineer, he counted among his friends and customers many motorsport legends like Fangio and Von Trips.


It would be no exaggeration to say that Renngemeinschaft Martini *was* the racing arm of BMW, and for many years. Though later eclipsed by the likes of Alpina, Schnitzer, and of course the works team when BMW at last created it, Martini continued to field BMW race cars into the ‘80s. His son Michael Martini raced some of those, and when BMW bought out the Martini business Michael joined as test driver (and, incidentally, first “Ring Taxi” pilot).


When BMW’s “Neue Klasse” sedans evolved into the E9 2800 and 3.0 family Martini naturally saw a new opportunity for racing, particularly with the growing manufacturer interest in motorsports as a marketing tool. Martini’s opening effort was to take Willi’s handsome new silver 3.0 CSL street car and prepare it to Group 1 specification, thereby adding it to the team’s stable of Ring veterans (being based at one of the world’s most legendary race tracks has its perks- in fact Martini seldom took their cars to race anywhere else, and who could blame them!). A proper Group 2 car followed, in by-now trademark Martini colors: Alpine White with green trim, no doubt inspired by the “Green Hell” of the Nordschleife. In case this point was not sufficiently clear the color scheme was supplemented by prominent graphics promoting the Nürburgring, including a very large splash of green on the bonnet with a map of the track on it, encircling a frontal sketch of a Formula
 

RonP

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car- an homage, presumably, to Martini’s earlier Formula 2 efforts, or to advertise their nascent involvement in Formula Super Vee.


For 1979, the final year of 3.0 CSL homologation, the team’s workhorse CSL was retired in favor of a fresh car, VIN “BMW 001/79”. As that number suggests, it was built from a factory-supplied shell rather than a production chassis. (Similarly built from shells, the well known Luigi "UFO" cars had VINs of "77-003" and "77-004”.) As a typical privateer car and continuing the practices of its predecessor, 001/79 employed by-now standard CSL race bits. These included parts from Alpina such as coilover front struts, a slide throttle intake, and dry sump oiling (this last having been re-allowed by a 1976 rules change intended to benefit Jaguar, whose motors had an alarming tendency to scatter due to lubrication loss). No werks-type exotica- center lock hubs and the like- were used, and Martini fashioned their own fiberglass components. A full season of events followed, all at the Ring, under the auspices of ADAC, DRM, and, for the annual July "Großer Preis der Tourenwagen”, the ETCC. Results were excellent in nearly all of them (including a fine 7th overall and 4th in Division 5 in the ETCC race), but the main priority for the team was always the Valvoline-Langstreckenpokal (“Long Distance Cup”) endurance championship.


As the season drew to a close Martini found themselves in a tight race for this championship, and this was to prove the undoing of 001/79- though, paradoxically, also its salvation. Here is an excerpt from a letter from Michael Martini many years later (2003), explaining the car’s history to a Herr Steinbrink who had bought the car from Willi.


In the last race of 1979 we swapped our 3.0 CSL coupe with a 2002 of the team of Hans Weisgerber and Richard Bremekamp to keep our chances intact for a title in the Long Distance Cup. It was a question of extra points based on the number of participants. Since the class of 2002's had a lot more starters, we hoped to make up the missing points this way. Unfortunately it did not work. To make matters worse our coupe was involved in an accident in the South Hairpin Curve on the first lap and had to abandon the race. Since the homologation for
 

RonP

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the CSL coupe expired as of 31.12.1979 we had to think about what we could do with the damaged vehicle. There was at the time discussion of allowing vehicles with an expired homologation to continue to race in the Long Distance Cup in a new class under Group 5 rules. That meant for us that we could use wider wheels and lighten the car. The disadvantage was, that we couldn’t race anymore with the old Group 2 bodywork. Since we had to repair the collision damage anyway we saw this as an opportunity to continue with the coupe and and install the Group 5 bodywork. In the midst of this work, we got the news that we could not participate in the endurance championship with this vehicle after all. We stopped working on the coupe after mounting the Group 5 fenders. This body was stored until you bought it from my father. The remaining parts were used to build up a 535i Group 2, since both vehicles had very many identical parts. But with that car we were never able to build on the success of our coupe.


A somewhat lurid sequence of photos documents this first-lap denouement, though happily the damage was not extensive. Another photo shows the stripped shell, repairs effected, sporting new Group 5 bodywork. It was in this state that the car languished, forgotten, in a corner of the Martini shop until it was sold to Steinbrink- who proceeded to slap street car running gear in, paint it in faux Motorsport livery, and, one assumes, parade it in front of his friends! (But given the state of the car when it turned up later in Amsterdam, it is inconceivable that it could have been road registered.) Notwithstanding the mild embarrassment of the circumstances, the car thus managed to escape the much worse fates of many of its contemporaries, such as the Emilio car, which was converted to hillclimb competition and badly wrecked.


The slow resuscitation of 001/79 began over ten years ago, when a noted US collector bought the car. Intending to restore it, his attentions were however almost immediately diverted by the acquisition of another car. The Martini CSL was again relegated to storage, until I bought it in 2012. My enthusiasm for the project perhaps clouded my judgment, for despite being in very sound
 

RonP

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condition the car needed absolutely everything! To turn the shell back into a race car, at least on the terms to which I was committed, using only vintage and period correct parts and with painstaking attention to its history, was an undertaking I frankly underestimated. But equally frankly it has been a lot of fun! In brief, I spent 3 years learning CSL and European touring car racing history, meeting experts, poring over a rich but uncatalogued archive of Martini photos, and scouring Europe for parts. I sourced Alpina parts in the UK, along with the gearbox and rear axle from the aforementioned Emilio car, bodywork in Germany, a complete M52 race motor from a garage in Italy, and other bits and pieces from all over. I have virtually memorized FIA Homologation Document 1648. I have personally examined or consulted photos of nearly every extant Group 2 CSL. And I have made a number of new friends, a few of whom deserve mention.


My first lucky break came when I wrote to the publishers of “Rennsportlegende Willi Martini” who kindly put me in touch with its author Wolfgang Thierack. Wolfgang has been enormously helpful, providing me with copies of all of his many photos of the Martini CSLs and critiquing my detective work as I tried to sort out cars and events. Wolfgang also introduced me to Michael Martini and his brother Olli, who have graciously and enthusiastically supported the project and endured my incessant questions. I was lucky too to meet Patrick Mortier, owner for some time of the Martini 535 mentioned earlier. This was a valuable connection, for many of the parts on that car (which is still actively campaigned in historic races in Europe) came originally from 001/79. Alex Elliott, who now looks after the 535 as well as many of the most significant CSLs, has provided many rare parts and helpful guidance. And no less valuable has been my association with Ron Perry, CSL expert and restorer par excellence, and Art Simonds, veteran of the earliest days of the werks Motorsport team who had a hand in building the all-conquering factory cars under Jochen Neerpasch


Though far from done, the restoration of 001/79 is well underway. The car was taken to bare metal and documented- a very interesting process which turned up lots of evidence in support of its history, and
helped clarify some of the puzzles I had encountered when researching it. The Group 5 bodywork was removed and preserved, and new front fenders welded in to carry the Group 2 flares. In another bit of serendipity, I was able to obtain flares and and a front air dam made from molds taken from the original parts many years ago. The motor is at the engine builder’s, and a period Sachs racing clutch is on its way from Germany- surely the last available anywhere, to judge from the difficulty I had in finding it! Accompanying the clutch will be a lovely set of original, sand-formed Alpina headers. Period Lockheed front brake calipers (as used then in Formula 1) are being rebuilt, together with correct Ate rears. I have drawn up plans to reproduce the large, endurance racing fuel tank but with a modern fuel cell hidden inside. The rest of the boot will be filled with the car’s original dry sump engine oil tank, and a tank for the rear axle oil which will be circulated by a period pump driven off the axle shaft.


The car has been accepted to the Monterey Motorsports Reunion this August, which is fitting as the event will celebrate BMW as the featured marque.
 

Ohmess

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I hope there are no last minute problems and this baby shows up in Monterey. I really want to see it now.
 
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