At the 1961 Frankfurt Motor Show, BMW’s legacy changed forever. Here the brand presented the first vehicles in its “New Class”. Of course, back then it was just called the BMW 1500. The nickname “Neue Klasse” only appeared in BMW advertising in 1964. Regardless, the BMW 1500 (and later the rest of the Neue Klasse vehicles) became a cornerstone of the brand; This helped both save the brand from extinction and lay the foundation for a line of vehicles that no automaker could compete with in the decades to come. The importance of the car can still be felt today, 65 years later.
The BMW 1500: 65 years ago it saved BMW
Before the car’s debut – and for the rest of 1961 – BMW was not in a good position. In the postwar period, BMW’s losses mounted: year after year, the brand posted poor financials and had little brand potential save for the adorable BMW Isetta (which was just a kind of BMW; technically, after all, it was a car designed by the Italian company Iso Autoveicoli). The enthusiasm for small cars waned and BMW’s luxury offerings aged. Things got bad, but the stage was set for the brand to take off. The Quandt family supposedly “saved” the brand around 1960 by investing heavily and acquiring a majority stake. The BMW 1500 took shape at the end of the 1960s.
Since BMW already had a working four-cylinder engine – the M115 – from its early attempts at a mid-range engine, a great design with good packaging was required. Enter Wilhelm Hofmeister, who designed the Neue Klasse limousine together with the Italian designer Giovanni Michelotti. Its simple, well-thought-out design and layout was a conscious departure from BMW’s previous models. To illustrate the contrast, think of the BMW 507 and then take a look at the BMW 1500. Aside from a passing similarity in the grille, almost nothing reveals that both models are BMWs. As a reminder, production of the 507 ended just two years before the debut of the BMW 1500!
The BMW 1500 was critically and commercially very well received. In 1963, BMW was able to pay dividends to its shareholders again, something that had not happened for two decades. As the success of the Neue Klasse became apparent, BMW set about making money. The BMW 1500 led to the BMW 1800, which featured BMW’s earliest “modern” powerplant, the M10 four-cylinder engine. A new 1600 model came onto the market in 1964, followed shortly afterwards by the BMW 02 series. In the ten years between 1960 and 1970, BMW sales tripled and sales increased more than sevenfold.
BMW 1500: 65 years later
In particular, the BMW 1500 is never available at a high price on collector markets. But today there is probably still a lot of the original Neue Klasse. The Hofmeister kink debuted on the BMW 1500. Even more obvious is that the Neue Klasse gave its name to the next generation of electrified BMW models. While the iX3 and its ilk don’t seem to have much in common with the boxy, functional 1500, and the brand isn’t having any particular problems at the moment, there’s a lot to be said about the ideological shift that BMW and the rest of the automotive market are currently grappling with. Remember how the nickname “Neue Klasse” came about: “It was believed that we had created a very unique and incomparable ‘new class’,” said Marc Thiesbürger, press spokesman for BMW Group Classic. Will the… er, New New Class be able to keep up – will anyone remember 2090? Only time will tell.
