An importer in New York, a designer he put forward to Munich, the engineers who built and tested the car, the managers who ran BMW while it was made and the shareholder who backed the company's rescue after it.
In September 1954 the first 507 prototype, built by Ernst Loof's team at the Nürburgring, won a gold medal at a concours in Bad Neuenahr. Max Hoffman, BMW's importer in New York, judged it unsaleable in America, and by the end of October sketches by Albrecht von Goertz, a German-born designer he had put forward to Munich, had arrived there. The history tells how the car was made. The entries here are about the people: Hoffman first, then the engineers, the managers who ran BMW while the car was built, the shareholder who backed the company afterwards and a Turin stylist who drew a 507 of his own. The cards after them name everyone the sources tie to the car.source 1source 2source 3
Hoffman's father had a grocery in Vienna and turned it into a maker of sewing machines, then of bicycles and motorcycles. The son raced motorcycles, and cars too (an Amilcar among them), and built a dealership that imported British, French and Italian cars into Central Europe; the Austrian Embassy's profile of him adds that he was Volvo's first importer in Europe. He reached New York by way of France, and a costume-jewellery business he started there in wartime paid for his return to cars. Jaguar, Volkswagen and Alfa Romeo were among the makes he went on to import, and at one time he accounted for about a third of Porsche's sales worldwide.
Motor Sport told what he did for Mercedes-Benz in its guide to the 300 SL in 2020:
Hoffman boldly wagered that if Mercedes built a road-going version of the W194, then he could sell them to Americans craving high-performance machines during an economic boom.
BMW's account of 2005 introduces him as its general importer in New York, very successful at launching German two-seaters, who wanted one thing from Munich above all: "Einen Sportwagen" (translated: a sports car). By Karlheinz Lange's research, as Bimmer reported it in 2013, he expected to sell about 2,000 of them in the United States. BMW's own accounts start the 507 with his request; Lange dates the start of the project to March 1953, in Munich, and the history gives both. Later, the embassy's profile says, he pressed BMW for a compact, fast saloon (sedan) for America, the car that became the 2002.source 4source 5source 2source 6
Fiedler had laid down BMW's car designs with Rudolf Schleicher in 1932 and designed the chassis of the pre-war 328, and after the war he went to England, to AFN, which lent him to Bristol. Back at BMW, by Lange's research, he was given charge in March 1954 of building the first prototype of an open sports car, the car that Loof's team put together at the Nürburgring. When Denis Jenkinson toured the Munich works for Motor Sport in 1955, the man who showed him round was Fiedler, by then the head of BMW's design department.source 7source 8source 6source 9
Von Falkenhausen ran BMW's motor racing from 1954, and the sources make him the 507's tester. When Motor Sport drove a prototype 507 in September 1956 he "produced the most comprehensive data sheets for the car", and it reported that he hoped to drive a 507 in the 1957 Alpine Rally. In 1987 the magazine remembered its own Denis Jenkinson arguing with him, at the time of the launch, about the way the brakes faded. BMW's release for his centenary in 2007 records a wish from 1955: he would have liked to sign the British racing rider John Surtees for BMW, but the budget did not stretch to it.source 10source 11source 12
Loof had headed BMW's sports-car department. In 1947 he set up Veritas to build sports cars on the 328, often a used 328 with a new body, and Veritas made them until 1953. BMW then bought the business and put Loof at the head of its research and development branch at the Nürburgring, in the former Veritas workshop, and there his team built the first 507 prototype in 1954. BMW Group Classic gives his years as 1907–1956.source 13source 2source 6source 1
Quandt had been buying BMW shares since the 1950s. After the shareholders' meeting of 9 December 1959, which the history describes, he bought more, and BMW's history gives his reasons: he "expanded his stockholding, motivated by the perseverance of the workforce and by his own confidence in the company". Der Spiegel reckoned in February 1960 that he held 10 to 15 per cent of the capital, and about DM 7 million of the convertible bond BMW had issued in 1958.source 14source 15source 16
Hanns Grewenig was BMW's sales director when the 507 was designed. He invited Goertz to Munich in 1954, and he and Fiedler were the two at BMW who stood by Goertz's flat kidney grille. Der Spiegel, writing after the crisis of 1959, blamed BMW's losses in part on the programme of luxury cars and sports cars that he and the then chairman of the supervisory board, Hans Karl von Mangoldt-Reiboldt, had pursued, and quoted his idea of what a BMW should be:
BMW-Wagen sollen die Visitenkarte der deutschen Gesellschaft sein.
In English, translated: BMW cars should be the calling card of German society. Grewenig was pensioned off when Heinrich Richter-Brohm became BMW's chief executive on 1 March 1957. Richter-Brohm's study for the board that year found that the car business had lost almost DM 60 million since it began, and on 9 December 1959 it was Richter-Brohm who faced the shareholders.source 17source 18source 19
Michelotti, the Turin stylist, drew a 507 of his own, on his own initiative, BMW wrote in 2015; the notable cars page tells the car's story. Lange's research, as Bimmer reported it, has chassis 70184 going to Italy in 1958, bodied by Scaglietti at Maranello and finished by Vignale in Turin, as the successor to the 507 that, Jouret and Werb wrote, Michelotti hoped BMW would build. The car was shown at the Turin show in 1959 (in May, by BMW's account), and BMW bought it in 2005.source 1source 6source 20
Albrecht von Goertz drew the 503 as well as the 507. Hans Stuck, "the pre-war Auto-Union G.P. driver" to Motor Sport in 1959, drove BMW's works 507s in hillclimbs in 1958 and 1959, and John Surtees, the motorcycle world champion, bought a 507 new from Munich; the notable cars page covers both. One of Stuck's works cars, 70079, went to Elvis Presley in December 1958.source 21source 22source 12source 23
head of motor racing, head of engine development
Engineer and racing driver. Born in Munich, he joined BMW in 1934 as a works rider and motorcycle designer; after the war he built racing cars under his own name, AFM, and won the German sports-car championship of 1948. He returned to BMW in 1954, added engine development to racing in 1957 and retired in 1976. He died in Munich.
engineer
The engineer who designed the 328's chassis, the tubular frame BMW patented; after the war he joined AFN in Britain and was loaned to Bristol for its Type 400. Back at BMW, its board gave him charge of the first 507 prototype in March 1954 (Bimmer, reporting Karlheinz Lange's research), and he was head of its design department by 1955.
designer
Industrial designer, born into an old noble family at Brunkensen, near Hanover. After a banking apprenticeship with Deutsche Bank in Hamburg and Helbert Wagg & Co. in London he emigrated to the United States in 1936; Der Spiegel adds that his mother was Jewish. In Los Angeles he modified Ford cars and built a coupé of his own design, the Paragon, shown at the 1939 World's Fair in San Francisco; he served in the US Army from 1940 to 1945 and became an American citizen. A chance meeting with Raymond Loewy led to the Pratt Institute and two and a half years in Loewy's Studebaker studio, where he and a colleague drew the Champion's "bullet nose" facelift. He opened Goertz Industrial Design in New York in 1953. Max Hoffman, BMW's importer in New York, put him forward to BMW, and he designed the 507 and the 503. His later designs ranged from an Agfa camera and Mont Blanc pens to SABA radios and televisions, and his last work was a Steinway grand piano. BMW and Motor Sport (1987) credit him with the Datsun 240Z; Nissan's letter to him of 1980, as Japanese Nostalgic Car reproduces it, says he was its design consultant from 1963 to 1965 and the sole consultant on a two-litre sports car developed with Yamaha that was not built, and that the 240Z was the work of Nissan's own designers, who had the benefit of his designs. Der Spiegel records that he drove BMW M3s into old age.
sales director
BMW manager in the 1950s, in charge of sales when the 503 and 507 were designed.
importer
Car importer. Born in Vienna, he raced motorcycles and cars and built a Vienna dealership importing cars to Central Europe. His father was Jewish, and he left Austria after the Anschluss of 1938 and reached New York in 1941. He founded Hoffman Motors in 1947 and in 1954 opened a New York showroom designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. He urged Mercedes-Benz to build a road-going 300 SL and ordered the first 1,000 cars himself, and the Austrian Embassy's profile credits him with the demand that led to Porsche's 356 Speedster. He was BMW's importer when the 507 was planned. In 1975 he divested his interests to BMW of North America, and in 2003 he was inducted into the Automotive Hall of Fame posthumously.
engineer
BMW's director of racing, by BMW's account, until the racing division was disbanded early in 1941; after the war he had the Kamm coupé for his own use, and entered it for Karl Kling's win at Hockenheim in 1947. He later headed BMW's development branch at the Nürburgring, his former Veritas works, where he built the first 507 prototype in 1954.
stylist
Turin car stylist. He began his career in 1937 as an apprentice at Stabilimenti Farina; according to carrozzieri-italiani he opened his own design studio in Turin in 1949, the first in Italy devoted only to car design; the TSOA Newsletter of 1966 also dates the studio to 1949. His first contact with Standard-Triumph came in 1957: Harry Webster's obituary in the Telegraph says Webster "discovered" him, while Graham Robson says he was found through Raymond Flower and hired on Webster's recommendation with Alick Dick's approval. His first Triumph design was the one-off TR3 "Dream Car" on a TR3 chassis, shown at Geneva in 1957 according to later accounts; Krause says it followed a chance meeting with Alick Dick at a motor show. He went on to design the Italia (1959–62) on TR3A and TR3B running gear. On his own initiative he drew a one-off body for a BMW 507 chassis, shown at the Turin show in 1959, which BMW has owned since 2005. He styled the Herald (1959), whose separate chassis made the Spitfire possible; answering Webster's idea of a "Herald sports car", he built a single prototype in 1960, code-named "Bomb", and later restyled the car as the Mk IV of 1970. For the TR he styled the prototypes Zest (1958) and Zoom (1959) and the TR4 of 1961, which joined Zest's nose to Zoom's tail and kept Zoom's hardtop with its lift-out panel; the TR4A, TR5 and TR250 kept that body with new detail, and its centre section on the TR6 (1969), whose new front and rear Karmann designed because he was busy. According to his son Edgardo, his work for Triumph ended in the late 1970s with a restyle of the TR7 from coupé to spider; he died in January 1980. No source read links him to the Le Mans or Macau competition bodies.
owner
American singer. He served with the US Army in Germany from 1 October 1958 to 2 March 1960, and owned a BMW 507 there.
shareholder
Industrialist, the second son of Günther Quandt, trained in accumulator manufacture and from the late 1930s a manager in the Quandt group. The BMW Foundation records, after Joachim Scholtyseck's study of 2011, that he joined the NSDAP in 1940 and, as a personnel manager, knew of the forced labour in the group's factories. He had been buying BMW shares since the 1950s. BMW founded the BMW Stiftung Herbert Quandt in 1970, for his sixtieth birthday.
chairman of the board
BMW's chief executive from 1957, through the end of the 503 and 507 and the crisis of 1959.
test driver, demonstrator, driver
Racing driver, known as the Bergmeister (mountain master). Before the war he drove Auto Union's Grand Prix cars and won the European Mountain Championship three times. Motor Sport, at lunch in 2011 with his son, Hans-Joachim Stuck, dates his work with BMW from 1957: he took class wins in the 507 and later won the German hill climb title in BMW's 700 coupé.
owner
Motorcycle and car racer: 500 cc world champion for MV Agusta in 1956, 1958, 1959 and 1960, and Formula 1 world champion in 1964, the only man to win Grand Prix world championships on two wheels and on four (BBC News). Motor Sport's Earls Court guide of 1959 noted that he owned a 507.
Every source the site cites is on the sources page.