Unknown Concept Cars #1: The 1990 BMW Ur-Roadster

When looking through my old Car Throttle posts, I stumbled across this one: A short post about an old and forgotten Volkswagen Concept car. And this got me thinking: Maybe I should make posts like that more often? So here it is, the beginning of a new series on Car Throttle: Unknown Concept Cars!
These will be rather short posts in comparison to my more in-depth stories like this one about “Babs” - the idea behind them is just to inform you about the existence of a certain concept car and the basic story behind it.

The car I’ve picked for Episode 1 is the 1990 BMW Ur-Roadster, and let’s start by talking about the elephant in the room: The looks. It certainly isn’t the most aesthetically pleasing car from Munich, mainly due to the odd front end: The hood seems to be too long and too low, and in comparison to the four headlights, the kidney grills seem to be too far down as well. The side view is mostly spoiled by the incredibly high rocker panels, the tiny door with a weird bulge underneath it, and the rear wheels and fenders which stick out a lot from the rest of the bodywork. The rear is actually rather good looking, though - the combined roll bar and rear wind screen, the humps behind the seats, the narrow back end with the flared fenders, the simple tail lights - it all just works out.

Now that we’ve got the styling part out of the way, let’s talk about what the Ur-Roadster (which is German for “original roadster”) actually is. As mentioned it was created in 1990, so just one year after the launch of the Z1 - yes, that weird roadster with the doors that slide downwards. And judging by the aforementioned side view details, it is safe to say that the Ur-Roadster has a similar, if not the same setup. In terms of looks however, the Ur-Roadster shows more resemblance to the BMW Z3 which launched 5 years later.

But there’s one more key information we need to know to understand this car: The powertrain. Because under that weird looking bonnet, we will not find the 170 hp engine used in the Z1, but rather the 2.3 liter inline-four from the E30 M3, producing 220 hp. This also explains why the Ur-Roadster was often referred to as “Z1 M”…

All in all, the Ur-Roadster was a concept car that grew out of the BMW Z1, with the idea behind it being the creation of an entry-level M car. Despite never being released, it still influenced the Z3 heavily, and with the release of the Z3 M the “cheap” M car finally became a reality. Today, the fully working, drivable concept spends its time in a big underground car park in the north of Munich, along with tons of other BMW concepts, race cars and low-mileage production vehicles - a couple of which you’ll surely see in this series at some point!

Alright guys, I hope you enjoyed this post! If you know any forgotten concept cars that I should feature in this series, comment down below! Until next time!
Tobi aka The Stig’s German Cousin