CarBrandLogos archive · BMW · 1936

BMW328

A clever cylinder head that made two litres behave like something much larger.

Photo: Mr.choppers · CC BY-SA 4.0

The story

A defining chapter in BMW history.

Explore the ideas, engineering and context that shaped the BMW 328, then continue into its specifications and place in the marque's lineage.

Origins

It won on its debut, taking the 1936 Eifel race at the Nürburgring, and everything about the car explains why. The 1,971 cc M328 six was conventional in its lower half, but Rudolf Schleicher's cylinder head was not: it gave the engine hemispherical combustion chambers and inclined valves without the expense of overhead camshafts, working the exhaust valves through a second rocker shaft and cross-over pushrods driven from the same camshaft in the block. Three carburettors fed it. Around that sat a light tubular frame and a slim aerodynamic body, and the whole car weighed very little.

BMW 328 6-Zylinder-Motor

Design and engineering

It took its class at Le Mans in 1939 and won the 1940 Mille Miglia outright, run that year as the Brescia Grand Prix, with Huschke von Hanstein and Walter Bäumer in a streamlined coupé bodied by Touring. Only 464 were built between 1936 and 1940.

BMW 328 Bj 1938 - Heck · Lothar Spurzem · CC BY-SA 2.0 de

BMW 328 Coupe - Hellenic Motor Museum - Joy of Museums

In production

The afterlife matters as much as the racing. BMW came out of the war with its car factory at Eisenach on the wrong side of the line and a prohibition on building vehicles, and the 328's drawings and engineering went to Britain as reparations. Bristol built the engine as its own, powering Bristol's cars and then, through the supply of engines to others, Frazer Nash, AC and the Cooper-Bristol Formula 2 cars that gave Mike Hawthorn his start. For most of a decade the most advanced small British sports-racing engine was a German design.

BMW 328 Coupe - Hellenic Motor Museum - Joy of Museums · Joyofmuseums · CC BY-SA 4.0

Legacy

BMW itself built nothing comparable until the 507 of 1955, and spent much of the postwar period trading on a reputation earned by 464 cars built before it all fell apart.

At a glance

The facts that define it.

Units built

464

Engine

1,971 cc M328 I6

Body

roadster

Technical specification

The 328, in detail.

Production: 1936–1940; 464 produced
Class: Sports car
Body style: roadster
Layout: FR layout
Engine: 1,971 cc M328 I6
Transmission: 4-speed manual
Designer: Peter SzymanowskiCitation needed; date=May 2010; Fritz Fiedler; Alfred Böning; Alex von Falkenhausen; Ernst Loof
Assembly: Germany: Eisenach
Manufacturer: BMW