The lavish Concorso d’Eleganza Villa d’Este consistently sees car makers trying to outdo each other with their heritage efforts and this year BMW will unveil another of its ‘homage’ one-offs. The 2019 car is a recreation of the BMW Garmisch, a concept based on a BMW 2002Tii originally designed by Marcello Gandini while working for Bertone and displayed as a concept at the 1970 Geneva show.
The original car disappeared after the show and hasn’t been seen since, but current BMW design chief Adrian van Hooydonk is said to have been fascinated by the car for some years. Although this is very much a BMW effort, the original Garmisch was created by Bertone as an independent project, Nuccio Bertone himself apparently hoping to consolidate his firm’s relationship with BMW.
The recreation involved calling on Gandini’s own memories of the original, but other than that the team had only faded photographs to go on. The structure was hand-built in Turin just like the original and they did a good job: “Having seen the final car, it is hard for me to even distinguish it from the original,” commented Gandini.
