The Thrilling BMW 6 Series: Character Comes from Tradition.
Source: BMW Group
• Sporting, challenging, progressive: essential BMW brand values defining the car’s basic qualities.
• Always at the top of its generation: the large BMW Coupé.
• In a dimension of its own: the Luxury Convertible for dynamic motoring with four occupants in style.
Stylish, oriented to the future, authentic: each model in the BMW 6 Series is a fascinating personality on four wheels. The BMW 6 Series Coupé continues the tradition of BMW’s highly successful sports cars with exceptional refinement and culture, offering the modern interpretation of a classic Gran Turismo. The BMW 6 Series Convertible, in turn, is already acknowledged as the epitome of luxurious and, at the same time, highly dynamic driving pleasure in an open 2+2 seater.
Now introducing new editions of both models, BMW is further sharpening the individual profile of both the Coupé and Convertible, both cars now boasting a design language able to convey its messages even more clearly thanks to specific refinements to the last detail.
The range of engines combines superior dynamics with modern efficiency – not only through the addition of the most sporting and powerful 3.0-litre straight-six diesel in the world to this outstanding model range.
And innovations in the areas of driver assistance and safety also underline the progressive character of the new BMW 6 Series Coupé and the new BMW 6 Series Convertible.
As on every BMW, the identity of the BMW 6 Series is clearly characterised by full harmony of design tallying with the product features borne out by the looks of the car. Both models, therefore, stand out through their superior dynamics, innovative technology, and unmarred driving pleasure. And precisely these qualities are symbolised by the sculptural design language of the both the Coupé and Convertible.
The unique, aesthetic appearance of the BMW 6 Series results from the fact that both models offer a particularly powerful and challenging interpretation of BMW’s elegant design language also characterising the BMW 7 Series in its very special look.
Authentic: impressive look, fascinating driving experience.
The design of both the outside and inside is devoid of individual, “flashy” effects, but rather stands out through its harmonious all-round concept.
Even the first impression will whet your appetite, looking forward to a car which offers a perfect balance of driving dynamics and motoring refinement of the highest standard. And drive technology as well as model equipment confirming this superiority likewise helps to make the BMW 6 Series a convincing offer in every respect.
A BMW 6 Series is impressive to behold – and it is equally impressive to drive. Its authenticity is the result of a development process in which the traditional values of the BMW brand played a leading role right from the start.
First and foremost, this means superior dynamics resulting from the construction and production of the most powerful cars for sporting competition. Then there is the touch of sophistication borne out clearly both in the choice of materials and in the quality of finish.
Taking these qualities into account, BMW builds cars absolutely remarkable to this day – cars also looking back at decades of outstanding style and success. Cars, indeed, which have always received the utmost focus in development, using innovative materials and production technologies and boasting design to give each and every model a clear sign of its inherent quality right from the start at very first sight. Indeed, the new BMW 6 Series is the most modern, technically demanding and, in its style, the most progressive car in this long succession of outstanding driving machines.
Sports cars and icons in style throughout the history of BMW.
For decades, sporting competition and the search for the exceptional have driven the development of particularly desirable models from BMW.
Now the new BMW 6 Series Coupé and the new BMW 6 Series Convertible form the current pinnacle in a long tradition of cars combining outstanding dynamics with supreme exclusivity. Legendary success in motorsport characterises this heritage in the same way as former models now acknowledged as icons in style and leaving a strong influence on automotive design to this very day.
Both the Convertible and the fixed-head Coupé continue a list of legends in the world of motoring. The BMW 327 launched in 1938, for example, was greatly admired both in Convertible and Sports Coupé guise for its supreme elegance and is acknowledged to this day as BMW’s most exclusive pre-war car. And as an alternative to the 55 hp power unit regarded back then as very muscular, both models were also available, again in the guise of the BMW 327/328, with the 80-hp sports engine taken from the legendary BMW 328 Roadster.
Using intelligent lightweight engineering to win the Mille Miglia.
One of the exclusive customers able to drive and enjoy the BMW 327/328 Coupé built only 86 times was the “Racing Baron” Fritz Huschke von Hanstein.
And nobody could have confirmed the qualities of such a BMW Coupé more impressively: Together with his co-pilot Walter Bäumer, Huschke von Hanstein won the overall rating in the 1940 Mille Miglia in a one-off coupé version of the BMW 328. The winning car in what, at the time, was the toughest race in the world, featured a 136-hp six-cylinder power unit, a tubular spaceframe, and a Superleggera body made completely of aluminium. Benefiting from this body sculptured at the time by Italian body designer Touring, the Coupé weighed a mere 780 kg or 1,720 lb.
Indeed, the mission to maximise performance by minimising weight remains part of BMW’s development strategy to this very day – which is why the BMW 6 Series owes at least some of its exceptional agility to its weight-reduced aluminium front section and the front and rear axles both also made of aluminium. The doors and front lid are likewise made of aluminium, with a special SMC sheet moulding compound, a cutting-edge thermoplastic material, being used on the front side panels and the rear lid.
The discerning motorist was able to enjoy the highest standard of prestige and superior motoring comfort in the BMW 335 built not only with a saloon body, but also as a convertible. Featuring a 90-hp 3.5-litre six-cylinder, particularly the open four-seater was exactly the right car at the time for motoring in supreme style. Regrettably, however, the BMW 335 entered the market at the wrong time, production of the car launched in 1939 amounting to only 410 units, among them 158 convertibles, due to the beginning of the war.
The first German eight-cylinder after the war.
In the early 1950s German carmakers concentrated their efforts mainly on pre-war models and concepts. BMW, however, carried only its proven six-cylinder power units forward from pre-war years, while the body of the BMW 501 entering production in 1952 was an all-new design and construction soon to become known as the “Baroque Angel” on account of the sweeping flow of lines extending out of the front wheel arches far down the side of the car.
Coupé and convertible versions of the BMW 501, as well as its successor, the BMW 502, were built by various coachbuilders in very exclusive numbers.
And with the introduction of the BMW 502 in 1954, these models benefited from the right kind of eight-cylinder power unit displacing 2.6 litres and developing maximum output of 95 hp. Indeed, this V8 was the first and, for a long time, the only post-war eight-cylinder built in Germany.
In 1955 BMW presented no less than two spectacular newcomers at the Frankfurt Motor Show: the BMW 503 Coupé and the BMW 507 Roadster. Both models were powered by BMW’s eight-cylinder now enlarged in size to 3.2 litres and developing 140 hp in the BMW 503 and an even more impressive 150 hp in the BMW 507.
The four-seater BMW 503 was also available in convertible guise, offering features such as leather upholstery and electric window lifts as signs of sheer luxury and unusually elegant design in the early years of the German “economic miracle”.
