RE: BMW 3.0Si Estate: Spotted
Discussion
king chancers 
Limpet said:
Fastdruid said:
Sorry but I don't like it. It looks every bit of the half arsed bodge job that it is.
The wonky curve to the roof, the wonky window that doesn't blend with the rest of the car. It's just shockingly bad.
Thank God. I thought I was the only one thinking how tragic it looks. Something about it reminds me of the small 70s Datsuns you used to see about. The wonky curve to the roof, the wonky window that doesn't blend with the rest of the car. It's just shockingly bad.
EDIT: Interior is lovely though.
I appreciate its rarity but not for me.
I couldn't help thinking last night that while firms like FLW or Harold Radford were converting mainstream cars down to a price, others seemed to have made a better go of it in the UK. One that sprang to mind was the big Fords done by Abbott of Farnham:
There's a big old white Farnham Zephyr/Zodiac in Burgess Hill I see occasionally on the industrial estate.
But even they resorted to vinyl roof covering in the end, what did that hide?
The Friary Velox was probably made in the tradition of the great coach-builders, but what were they thinking with that windowline?
The works built Rover SD1 estate actually worked pretty well:
There's a big old white Farnham Zephyr/Zodiac in Burgess Hill I see occasionally on the industrial estate.
But even they resorted to vinyl roof covering in the end, what did that hide?
The Friary Velox was probably made in the tradition of the great coach-builders, but what were they thinking with that windowline?
The works built Rover SD1 estate actually worked pretty well:
First topic that's prompted me to post after about eight years of unregistered lurking!
Love E3s and like the owner/seller of the car have owned a 2500 and a 3.0Si. One broken to help the one eventually scrapped due to the usual rust problems.
3.0Si was really the M5 of the early 70s, owned mine from 87 to late 90s and was able to scare hot hatches (and me) at least in the 80s whilst looking like an old Munich taxi. Will try and upload images later from a better device.
The estate really was a unicorn. Saw one once, parked (or abandoned) at a motor factors in Gorseinon in around 88 and the BMW rust was competing with the Austin Maxi and Crayford rust so it looked a sad specimen even after about 15 years. Driving it must have felt you had a lean to greenhouse (sort of)attached.
Don't really get the hate for the styling, we're probably too used to factory built estates now. Thanks to cookie1600 and RoverP6B for the pics that show pretty much all the estate conversions suffered from the same problems with C/D pillars and rear hatches. Also think the really cool thing about all the early 70s conversions was the sort of customers who'd spend up to twice the original price of already expensive car, King of Greece etc...
Would love this one but at £80k would want a lot of cars in what would have to be a £1m+ collection first including a 3.0Si saloon...
Love E3s and like the owner/seller of the car have owned a 2500 and a 3.0Si. One broken to help the one eventually scrapped due to the usual rust problems.
3.0Si was really the M5 of the early 70s, owned mine from 87 to late 90s and was able to scare hot hatches (and me) at least in the 80s whilst looking like an old Munich taxi. Will try and upload images later from a better device.
The estate really was a unicorn. Saw one once, parked (or abandoned) at a motor factors in Gorseinon in around 88 and the BMW rust was competing with the Austin Maxi and Crayford rust so it looked a sad specimen even after about 15 years. Driving it must have felt you had a lean to greenhouse (sort of)attached.
Don't really get the hate for the styling, we're probably too used to factory built estates now. Thanks to cookie1600 and RoverP6B for the pics that show pretty much all the estate conversions suffered from the same problems with C/D pillars and rear hatches. Also think the really cool thing about all the early 70s conversions was the sort of customers who'd spend up to twice the original price of already expensive car, King of Greece etc...
Would love this one but at £80k would want a lot of cars in what would have to be a £1m+ collection first including a 3.0Si saloon...
RoverP6B said:
I seem to recall a Belgian coachbuilder was responsible for these rather lovely Fintail conversions (of which a large number still exist).
They were converted by the Belgian CKD assembler / importer. They also did the W114 / W115Mercedes actually built "chassis for special purpose bodies" to sell to coachbuilders. I can't find any pics of the W110 in the as built condition but the W114s left looking like this:
They offered similar versions up to W210 as far as I can tell.
Pics from here https://mercedes-benz-publicarchive.com/marsClassi...
Interesting to hear all the opinions on the side window styling of the thread subject and other vehicles. It reinforces how difficult it is to style a car coherently and why manufacturers spend so long obsessing over a mm here and there etc.
Mind you, doesn't always help.....
and one further contribution to the crap conversion list....
Mind you, doesn't always help.....
and one further contribution to the crap conversion list....
AMGSee55 said:
and one further contribution to the crap conversion list....
Love a good quick estate or unusual estate conversion but the Roos Engineering Lagonda was a disaster of styling trying to straightening out to vertical the last two posts to give it some sort of capacity, but making it look like it had reversed at 70mph into a brick wall. Dutchman Harry Kielstra made a much more refined and pleasing version of the concept:
The Sultan of Brunei and his brother kept many high end manufacturers in business through the 90's and they had some lovely conversions carried out on Ferrari (the Venice range), Rolls Royce, Bentley and Aston Martin, who seemed to create whatever they wanted:
I'm not sure the two above are that well resolved and other Aston built two door shooting brakes seemed to have been far better proportioned:
Aston build quality and warranty would have been maintained with these 'conversions', I bet there wasn't any pop-riveting or vinyl in their product.
Of course the problem with converting cars like a Rolls Royce, is you can tend to make it look a bit too much like a hearse. Getting that 'C' and 'D' pillar proportion right and the side glass flow with the upper body line is crucial and I don't think these quite achieved it:
Is there some Volvo going on for the tailgate here:
Sloping Seraphs!
(converted in Italy)
And an Arnage with too much glass
All in all, many of the conversions, like the BMW in the article just miss the target through a lack of design and consideration for the original vehicle lines, proportions and flow.
Edited by cookie1600 on Wednesday 31st January 10:41
Edited by cookie1600 on Wednesday 31st January 10:42
The Aston Martin and Lagonda shooting brakes are all utterly awful, but then the Virage and Wedge were pretty hideous to start with.
Thinking of odd Merc estates, what about this stretch-boot Binz S212? Bizarre or what. An AMG version with the extended wheelbase might be a bit of a hoot though.
Thinking of odd Merc estates, what about this stretch-boot Binz S212? Bizarre or what. An AMG version with the extended wheelbase might be a bit of a hoot though.
RoverP6B said:
Alas, I can't find a photo of the E30 Touring conversion that spawned the factory car, other than one grainy B&W shot of the bare shell - but it looks exactly like the factory car
Do you mean the Luchjenbroers conversion? Motor Sport had a brief feature on it in December '86:https://www.motorsportmagazine.com/archive/article...
Can't help thinking they must have been gutted when BMW launched the official version just a few months later.
Spumfry said:
Do you mean the Luchjenbroers conversion? Motor Sport had a brief feature on it in December '86:
https://www.motorsportmagazine.com/archive/article...
Can't help thinking they must have been gutted when BMW launched the official version just a few months later.
Nah, that's the 3-door conversion I posted above. I'm talking about the Max Reisböck conversion that became the prototype for the production car.https://www.motorsportmagazine.com/archive/article...
Can't help thinking they must have been gutted when BMW launched the official version just a few months later.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MF0CUaS0czk
This is where it all started... just built by one guy for his own family's needs, no thought given to it being made into a production model... but the result was so well-resolved that BMW put it into production pretty much unchanged.
Last summer some time, one of these rare beasts was identified by me in the background of a photo taken in the late 70's/early 80's which was posted in the 'period' classic pictures thread in Yesterdays Heroes, but the useless search facility on here now means I'm struggling to find it now.
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