BMW M GmbH Should Have Made These Wacky Unreleased Rides

Not every concept is meant to be released into the world. Sometimes designers and engineers just let loose and see what they can do, without having any real intention of building the project. This has happened numerous times at BMW’s M GmbH performance division, and the fruits have been some of the strangest (or coolest) BMWs you’ve seen.

The Motorsport (M) division has been around since the ’70s and helped BMW establish and maintain the reputation it has today. None of that would have been possible had those guys not taken chances and played around with different ideas and versions of the cars that were coming out of Munich. Where there’s risk and experimentation, there’s always going to be some things that don’t make the cut. And Car and Driver recently did a feature about these exact types of cars.

The rides on the list include the 8-series “Der Bolide”, X5 Le Mans, E30 M3 Pickup, X5 Rear-Wheel-Drive Project, M5 Cabriolet, M3 Compact, M3 Touring, X5 Rear-Wheel-Drive Project, a Z3 concept, and a super-weird-looking 5-series Touring High-Roof, some of which you can see in the gallery below.

The strangest of the bunch is probably the Z3 pictured above, which looks absolutely nothing like the real Z3 that made it into mass production. It looks like a variation of the smart Roadster, certainly more so than anything that would typically come out of BMW’s camp.

Check out the full article to learn more about these oddballs, then let us know what you think.

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via [Car and Driver]