BMW Mille Miglia Concept, Teal Metallic

On 28 April 1940 the Mille Miglia was run not over open roads but around a closed triangle linking Brescia, Cremona and Mantua, lapped nine times. BMW's streamlined 328 Touring Coupé, shared by Fritz Huschke von Hanstein and Walter Bäumer, won it outright at an average of 166.7 km/h, a record no Mille Miglia winner has matched since, finishing a quarter of an hour clear of the second-placed Alfa Romeo. Sixty-six years later BMW answered that car with the Mille Miglia Concept, a one-off coupé built on the running gear of the Z4 M Coupé. The quotation is plain: the long bonnet, the divided windscreen, the cabin set low between swelling wings, and rear wheels hidden entirely behind spats.

This piece is finished in a deep teal metallic, petrol blue on the wings and greener in the hollows. It is paired with an orange-tan cabin, and a slip of the same orange lines the gills behind the front wheels. Through the split windscreen sit a silver-finished dashboard with two dials, ribbed seats crossed by black harness straps and a full roll cage; outside, frosted round lamps flank the tall kidney grille and a red lamp strip cuts across the tail on the diagonal. Built at 1:18, it rests on a grey stitched base whose black plaque carries the BMW roundel and reads 'Limited', one of 7.