BMW v Ford 1970 to 1975

[Peter Mallett]

Following on from Jonners’ post in the Capri Shell thread, concerning the input to racing that the Blue Oval has had, I was reading the article in Motorsport magazine January 2007 about the 3.0CSL BMW and its success in racing. According to them this doyen of the tracks won major championships from 1973 to 1979, and this was more special because they stopped making the car in 1975!

Although they admit that Ford (with its 2600 RS) "romped to victory" in 1972 (not strictly accurate they finished second overall) the article suggests Ford were “caught napping” after the defection of Neerspach and Braungart to BMW in 1973 and thus lost something.

Let’s not forget that Ford were competing through privateer teams essentially until 1971 when they first approached Broadspeed to build the RS 2600 (with the Weslake headed 2900cc engine) and indeed won it (were BMW caught napping?). So it would be fair to say that rather than caught napping, Ford had seen the wisdom in getting more involved and then in 1972 started putting the plans in place to win the ETCC (let’s concentrate on that record). Interestingly Ford beat BMW in 1972 but the title went to Alfa Romeo for it’s under 1300cc class wins. Subsequently BMW and Ford lobbied the CSI to remove this class from the championship and thus this would not occur again.

So, moving on to 1973 when the new BMW 3.0CSL (Batmobile) deservedly took the championship. Ford needed to produce a car with a rear wing and this took a long time, mainly because of the type of company it is/was. A major popular carmaker couldn’t just redesign/design a new car from scratch. Indeed, according to the article BMW took over the original CSL concept from Alpine.

We all know the story of 1974, the oil crisis and big cars and Motorsport suffering. Corporate Ford didn’t really want to continue its involvement but the RS3100 was on the stocks (albeit clashing with the Mark 2 hatchback model), the economics were also impacting BMW but as an "upper level" manufacturer perhaps they had a different view. Ford's RS3100 came out complete with ducktail and apart from one race, won the 1974 ETCC.

By 1975 the manufacturers had stopped development of the cars and either moved away from ETCC and into regional championships or sold the cars off to privateers.

So my point is that as much as the BMW is a fantastic car, the poor old Blue oval appears to get a kick in the nuts because (heaven forbid) it actually dared to compete and win with a bread and butter car!

Or am I missing something?

My thanks to Frank de Jong for the ETCC facts. http://etcc-history.it4us.nl/