Letting nearly 40 CSLs loose in their natural habitat would have been a fitting way to celebrate the car's
10th anniversary
, but unfortunately the Salzburgring track day scheduled as part of the CSL's birthday run didn't come off. However, having twisted the arm of Schnitzer Motorsport for a tour around its Freilassing workshop, the group had an equally interesting activity to occupy its day.
Sean's CSL tour included stop at Schnitzer
With a gaggle of baying BMW M enthusiasts descending on his premises, it was understandable that boss Karl 'Charly' Lamm - younger half-sibling to the original Schnitzer brothers and current team manager - looked a bit apprehensive.
Far from the AC Schnitzer's usual gaudy fare, the eye candy on offer was superbly tasteful and wallet-shrivellingly unique. Confronted by icons from the company's racing past - including a 320i Turbo with a ludicrously large wing, Roberto Ravaglia's E30 DTM car and a brace of touring cars of E36 and E90 vintage - as well as umpteen dazzling trophies bearing plaques denoting first place finishes in races like the Nurbugring, Spa and Le Mans 24 hours, I didn't know where to look.
After an overview of Schnitzer Motorsport's history, Lamm lead us into the DTM workshop. His band of merry Munich mechanics prepare BMW works cars for current DTM champion Bruno Spengler and his teammate Dirk Werner, and the attention to detail and engineering intricacies on the cars boggle the brain.
Sebring winning LMR and long-tail McLaren
You can tell Lamm is an enthusiast at heart as he walked us round the car, ardently explaining how the driver sits lower than the exhausts exit - which actually protrude through the door - and in a full carbon fibre tub.
You can just about glimpse the restricted 480hp 4.0-litre V8 motor mounted low and beneath the torso-sized carbon fibre airbox and the latticework of double-wishbone pushrod suspension. It's a full-on prototype racer that bears very little resemblance to the E92 M3 (apart from its vaguely similar silhouette bodywork), and Lamm is candid in admitting it - he's less open about pictures, even just of the bodywork, however...
The DTM car was not the main event though, as waiting for us outside were two sportscar legends insured for around 4m euros each: a 1997 McLaren F1 GTR 'Long Tail' and the BMW V12 LMR prototype that won the 1999 Sebring 12 hours.
Touring cars at the heart of Schnitzer heritage
In race car terms, both are ancient and obsolete, but as objects to behold, both are beautiful - sharing the same basic naturally aspirated 6.0-litre V12 motor with exhaust systems Medusa would be proud of, and details so pure and mechanically unadulterated you'd kill for them on a modern M car.
Lamm ran us through the concept of the LMR built in conjunction with Williams and how they reduced frontal area to maximise speed down the Mulsanne. You can't buy insight like this from someone as cool as he is - and all from an unassuming corner of a southern German industrial estate.