The BMW 507: The Car That Almost Didn't Survive
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Quick Takeaways
- The BMW 507 was produced from 1956 to 1959, with just 252 cars built — each one hand-finished and priced at a level that nearly bankrupted BMW.
- Designed by Albrecht von Goertz, it was intended to compete with the Mercedes-Benz 300SL in the American export market and fell short of its sales targets by a significant margin.
- Elvis Presley owned one during his military service in Germany. Max Hoffmann, the importer who commissioned it, owned another.
- Decades after production ended, BMW acquired as many surviving examples as it could find, restored them, and now considers the 507 one of the foundational designs in its heritage.
The Car That Was Supposed to Save BMW in America
In the mid-1950s, BMW was in serious financial difficulty. The postwar recovery had been slow, and the company's lineup wasn't generating the revenue needed to stabilize the business. Max Hoffmann, BMW's American importer and one of the most important figures in introducing European sports cars to the postwar American market, had a proposal: build a beautiful open sports car, price it below the 300SL, and sell it in America. BMW's board agreed. The brief went to Albrecht von Goertz, a German-American designer who had also worked with Nissan.
What von Goertz produced was the 507 — a long-hood, short-deck roadster with an aluminum body over a steel chassis, powered by BMW's 3.2-liter V8. The proportions were elegant and restrained in a way that distinguished it immediately from the more theatrical Mercedes. The 507 looked like it had been designed by someone who trusted the shape to be enough without additional drama, because it was.
The Problem with Being Beautiful and Expensive
The 507 cost BMW far more to produce than anticipated. Each car was hand-finished, and the aluminum bodywork required skilled craftsmen to shape and fit correctly. BMW priced the car at 26,500 Deutschmarks in Germany, which translated to roughly $9,500 in the United States — more than Hoffmann had expected and close enough to the 300SL price that the competitive advantage he'd envisioned largely evaporated.
Sales were slow. BMW had hoped to sell several hundred cars per year and managed a total of 252 over three full years of production. The losses on each car were substantial. By the time production ended in 1959, the 507 program had contributed meaningfully to the financial crisis that nearly led to BMW being acquired by Daimler-Benz. A shareholder vote in 1959 narrowly preserved BMW's independence.
What Happened to the Cars
Of the 252 507s built, most survive. BMW's heritage division has identified and restored several, and the company has made acquiring significant examples a priority. One of the most notable restoration projects involved a 507 that had been painted red during Elvis Presley's ownership — reportedly to discourage the crowds of female fans who gathered around the car during his Germany posting — and was later repainted white. BMW identified and restored the car to its original silver.
The 507 appears regularly at major concours events and consistently performs well in judging. Its survival rate is high for a car of its era, partly because the early owners tended to be the kind of people who maintained what they bought, and partly because the cars are simply good enough that subsequent owners have always found them worth preserving.
Bottom Line
The BMW 507 nearly took the company down with it. BMW considers it one of the finest things the company has ever made. Both of those things are true, and neither one cancels the other out.
