The BMW M1 and the Concorde - extreme and outlawed
03/05/2011
At first glance, the BMW M1 and Concorde seem to have little in common. But first impressions are deceptive: both the BMW M1 sports car and the Concorde supersonic passenger aircraft operated at the limits of what was feasible in their respective fields and broke innovative ground. Both remained rare and were not a great commercial success. Both were thwarted by laws and regulations, the Concorde was banned after the accident in Paris, and the racing series for which the BMW M1 had been built no longer existed when it was launched. For both, the focus was on performance and speed, not on economical use of fuel or minimal noise emissions. And finally, both are attractive in their appearance.
The BMW M1 achieved Ferrari performance with half the cylinders. It was developed with racing in mind; the M1 was actually a racing car that was civilized for the road. Nevertheless, the BMW engineers managed to achieve a high level of everyday usability, something that hardly any manufacturer of super sports cars had achieved before. It is interesting to note that the M1 was almost unsaleable, the last examples had to be sold with substantial discounts, an extension of production was out of the question in view of the moderate sales success, so it remained at around 460 units built between 1978 and 1981. Most of these coupés with tubular trellis frames and plastic bodywork probably still exist today, with prices around double the original price today. The M1 coupés gained particular fame through the specially created Procar racing series, in which Formula 1 stars fought fierce battles with other racing drivers in the pre-program of Formula 1 races.
The Concorde was an incredible feat of engineering at the end of the 1960s. It was the only commercially reasonably successful supersonic passenger aircraft and made it possible to fly from Europe to the USA in around 3.5 hours. Originally received with great enthusiasm, the high operating costs, especially in view of rising fuel prices, spoke against supersonic flight, most airlines therefore canceled the orders and it was only thanks to Air France and British Airlines that the Concorde was included in the flight plans at all. Anyone who ever took a flight in the Concorde sat in a relatively cramped cabin that felt a bit like a Fokker-100, with 4 seats per row and a very minimalist entertainment offering. There were no screens, the only entertainment was provided by the speed display at the front behind the pilot's cockpit, which showed in Mach how fast you were currently flying. But it was precisely this minimalism and the reduced but excellent first-class food, along with the drastically reduced travel time and some special "goodies" (e.g. direct boarding of the aircraft from the first-class lounge at London Heathrow) that made the Concorde so appealing. The Concorde flew extremely safely and reliably, but required an enormous amount of maintenance. "The most elegant of all the airplanes" (chief pilot of British Airlines during the on-board speech) did not make it back into commercial aviation after the accident in Paris in 2000, which we now know was not its own fault.
AR tested the BMW M1 in number 33 from 1980, we have refreshed the test and illustrated it with the original pictures.
