BMW507

BMW 507 Interior

Inside the BMW 507 of 1956–59: the Series I and Series II dashboards, the ivory wheel and the big dials, leather seats and pleated doors, the Becker radio, the hood and the space for luggage behind the seats.

The cockpit of a white BMW 507 with mustard leather seats, an ivory steering wheel and a loudspeaker grille in the middle of the dashboard.
The cockpit of a white 507 at Sakai, Japan, on 20 October 2013: mustard leather seats, the ivory wheel and the loudspeaker grille in the middle of the Series II fascia.Hunini, CC BY-SA 3.0

BMW's brochure of 1959 sold the cockpit on its leather: wide seats shaped to the body, doors lined in leather with roomy pockets and wide armrests, and big instruments in the driver's line of sight beside a lockable glovebox. The car Denis Jenkinson saw in Munich in 1955 already had a radio, a heater, big door pockets, plenty of padding and thick carpets. Gordon Wilkins, writing for Motor Trend in January 1958, found that "Interior finish is excellent, but in strictly functional style."⁠1​2​3

The dashboard and the controls

BMW made a set of changes in June 1957, and the dashboard was one of them; the BMW V8 Club's list starts the new one at chassis 70044, the first of the Series II. The Series I fascia has no loudspeaker (on some cars it sat on the parcel shelf behind the seats); the Series II fascia carries its loudspeaker grille in the middle, above the radio, with a larger glovebox. Sports Cars Illustrated had reported in May 1957 that "the dash has been changed once and will be redesigned again to eliminate traces of 'cheapness' in appearance".

Two big dials, the speedometer and the rev counter, each 140 mm across, stand in front of the driver, with a smaller gauge between them. The steering wheel is ivory, with four spokes in an X. On it, Sports Cars Illustrated wrote in 1959, "the central button blows the horns, but the ring flashes the high beam headlights"; Motor Sport, driving BMW GB's car in 1987, found that the half-ring was "actually the control for dipping the headlights!" The column adjusts for reach, released from under the dash, and the starter button also freed the key and locked the steering when the ignition was off.

The gear lever stands on the floor between the seats, "very short, stiff, large-knobbed" to Motor Sport in 1956 and "properly located" to the Americans in 1959, who found the pedals less happy: "All are rather high and the pendant accelerator is so short that heel and toe operation is impossible." BMW rearranged them for 1960.⁠4​5​6​7​8​9​10​11​12

The dashboard of a BMW 507 with an ivory steering wheel, three dials, a radio with ivory buttons and a floor gear lever.
A 507 fascia with no loudspeaker grille, the Series I layout, at Retro Classics, Stuttgart, on 27 February 2025.Alexander Migl, CC BY-SA 4.0
The cockpit of a black BMW 507 with brown leather seats, an ivory steering wheel and three round dials in a black dashboard.
A 507 with brown leather seats and the central loudspeaker grille of the Series II layout, at the same show the same day.Alexander Migl, CC BY-SA 4.0

Seats and doors

The seats are leather. The first customers found that they did not go back far enough, the BMW V8 Club records, and the Series II seats got longer runners. Motor Sport in 1987 found "far more room than the 507's external appearance suggests" and the seats comfortable and supportive. Sports Cars Illustrated's testers wanted more grip from them:

Interior finish is of the highest quality, with little heed paid to cost control. Seats could offer more lateral support, however.

Sports Cars Illustrated, December 1959

The same test found that the backrests had three positions but could be set only from outside the seat, and that on hard, fast turns the driver had to hold the wheel firmly "to avoid ending up in the door pockets". Those doors are trimmed in pleated leather with thickly chromed fittings, and each has two large pockets with spring-loaded flaps.

For the colours, the BMW V8 Club lists 22 pairings of paint and upholstery, among them Feather White with red, Stone Grey with red and Japan Red with light brown, in a list it marks "ohne Gewähr" (without guarantee). Karlheinz Lange, writing for BMW, gives 29 colours, Bimmer reported in 2013.⁠5​10​11​6​13

The cockpit of a grey BMW 507 with red pleated leather seats, an ivory steering wheel and a loudspeaker grille in the middle of the dashboard.
Red pleated leather seats, the ivory wheel and a door pocket with its flap in a grey 507 at Techno-Classica, Essen, on 8 April 2016; the loudspeaker grille in the fascia marks the Series II layout.Andrew Bone from Weymouth, England, CC BY 2.0

The radio

The radio was an extra: a Becker with an automatic station-seeker, and an automatic aerial beside it, in BMW's lists of 1955, 1957 and 1959. BMW gives the model fitted to Elvis Presley's car, chassis 70079, as a Becker Mexico, and the BMW Archive's certificate for that car, as Bimmer reported it in 2009, says the same; Elvis's car was restored with one.⁠14​8​1​15​16

A worn chrome Becker Mexico car radio with a station dial and two knobs on a red display stand.
The Becker Mexico radio from Elvis Presley's 507, as it came out of the car before the restoration, on show in the BMW Museum, Munich, on 23 May 2025.Wikisympathisant, CC BY-SA 4.0

Hood, hardtop and luggage

The hood (soft top) is unlined, over wind-up windows. In 1955 Jenkinson found that the canvas hood and the glass windows made "a very weather-tight closed car", and in 1959 the Americans liked how easily it went down: "Flip-top, it should be called. All you do is unfasten the two latches above the windshield and literally toss the top up and back." The aluminium hardtop bolts on over the folded hood, without taking the hood off, Sports Cars Illustrated reported in 1957.

Luggage space changed with the series. In the Series I the big tank stood upright behind the seats, with a lockable compartment across the car above it, and customers complained that the boot (trunk) was too small, by the BMW V8 Club's account. Bimmer reported in 2013 that customers of the Series I complained of a smell of fuel in the cockpit. From the Series II the tank sat under the boot floor beside the spare wheel. "Shifting the fuel tank back next to the low-placed spare has opened up some storage space behind the seats," Sports Cars Illustrated reported in 1957, and two years later its testers judged the space, in the boot and behind the seats, "probably just enough for two".⁠10​2​7​4​5​13

A white BMW 507 roadster seen from the rear left on a white show floor, its hood folded under a blue cover, with an ivory steering wheel and twin exhausts.
A Series II roadster, by its photographer's title, with its hood folded under a blue cover behind the seats, at Grand Basel, Switzerland, on 8 September 2018.Ank Kumar, CC BY-SA 4.0

Sources

Every source the site cites is on the sources page.

  • Primarymade at the time, by the maker or by people who were there
  • Referenceserious later work: clubs, specialists, magazines, books
  1. Bayerische Motoren Werke AG, BMW 507 Touring Sport (sales brochure), German, 1/1959, W 61 5 1.59, the interior page: leather seats, doors lined in leather, pockets and armrests, instruments, lockable glovebox; "Sonder-Zubehör". archive.org/details/1959-bmw-507-touring-sport-brochure.-w-61-5-1.-59-0 Primary
  2. Denis Jenkinson ("D.S.J."), "At the House of B.M.W.", Motor Sport, Nov 1955, p. 46, the cockpit of the 1955 car: radio, heater, door pockets, padding, carpets; the hood and wind-up windows. motorsportmagazine.com/archive/article/november-1955/46/at-the-house-of-bmw Primary
  3. Gordon Wilkins, "BMW 503 and 507", Motor Trend, Jan 1958, the 507 paragraph, the interior finish. archive.org/details/sim_motor-trend_1958-01_10_1 Primary
  4. BMW AG (BMW Group PressClub Czech Republic), "Zeitlose Eleganz: 50 Jahre BMW 507 und BMW 503", chapter of the press kit "Legenden der 50er Jahre: BMW 507 – BMW 503 – BMW Isetta", German, Apr 2005, the changes of June 1957; the tank behind the front seats, then under the boot floor. press.bmwgroup.com/czech/article/attachment/T0066597CS/96056 Primary
  5. BMW V8 Club Deutschland, "Modellübersicht 503 507 3200 CS", Series I and II: the dashboard, the loudspeaker and the glovebox; the steering wheel; the Series II seat runners; the Series I tank and the luggage compartment behind the seats. bmw-v8-club.de/fahrzeuge/8-zylinder-baureihe/modeluebersicht-503-507-3200-cs.html Reference
  6. BMW V8 Club Deutschland, "Technische Daten 503 507 3200CS", running changes from chassis 70044; standard equipment; "Aussenfarben / Polsterfarben". bmw-v8-club.de/fahrzeuge/8-zylinder-baureihe/techniche-daten-503-507-3200-cs.html Reference
  7. Jesse Alexander, "Complete report on BMW 507", with "Factory test data" and "Late news from BMW", Sports Cars Illustrated, May 1957, pp. 18–21, 50, the dash to be redesigned; the gear lever; the hardtop over the cloth top; the storage behind the seats. archive.org/details/sim_car-and-driver_1957-05_2 Primary
  8. Bayerische Motoren Werke AG, BMW 502 · 503 · 507 (V8 range catalogue), German, 1957, Nr. W 147, "Serien-Zubehör": speedometer and rev counter; the column adjustable; the floor lever; "Sonder-Zubehör": the Becker radio and the automatic aerial. archive.org/details/100_20260601 Primary
  9. Bayerische Motoren Werke AG, BMW 507 Touring Sport (sales brochure, French), French, 1/1958, W 61 f 5 1.58, standard equipment: the two dials. archive.org/details/101_20260417 Primary
  10. Sports Cars Illustrated, "Disc-Braked BMW 507" (road test), with the same issue's Frankfurt show report, Dec 1959, pp. 49–51, 104, p. 51: the wheel, the starter, the column, the gear lever, the pedals; p. 50, caption: the interior finish, the quotation; p. 51: the backrests, the turns, the door caption; p. 51: the top, the latches; the luggage; the spare under the deck. archive.org/details/sim_car-and-driver_1959-12_5 Primary
  11. Alex Harmer, "Sisters under the skin?", Motor Sport, Feb 1987, p. 17, the painted fascia; the headlamp ring; the pedals; first impressions of room; the seats. motorsportmagazine.com/archive/article/february-1987/17/sisters-under-the-skin Reference
  12. Bill Boddy, "German high performance", Motor Sport, Nov 1956, p. 28, the gear lever. motorsportmagazine.com/archive/article/november-1956/28/german-high-performance Primary
  13. Jackie Jouret and Helmut Werb, "507s star at Pebble Beach", Bimmer, No. 119, 25 Oct 2013, p. 8, Lange's colours; the fuel smell in the cockpit. bimmer-mag.com/issues/119/articles/507s-star-at-pebble-beach Reference
  14. auto motor und sport, IAA report, "Technische Daten der deutschen Personenwagen" and "Preise der deutschen Personenwagen", Heft 20, 24 Sep 1955, the 507's extras, 1955. archive.org/details/auto-motor-und-sport-1955-heft-20 Primary
  15. BMW AG (BMW Group PressClub Global), "Elvis' BMW 507 lives on: Comeback at the Concours d'Elegance in Pebble Beach" (press release), Munich, 4 Aug 2016, the Becker Mexico radio. press.bmwgroup.com/global/article/detail/T0262726EN/elvis Primary
  16. Jackie Jouret, "Elvis' 507: The real story", Bimmer, No. 83, Jun 2009; republished on bimmer-mag.com, 28 Jul 2014, the archive certificate of 70079. web.archive.org/web/2016id_/http://www.bimmer-mag.com:80/news-blog/elvis-507-the-real-story Reference