BMW News

The concept car is the BMW 3.0 CSL Hommage. The color is Golf Yellow. The setting is the world-famous Concorso d’Eleganza Villa d’Este at Lake Como, Italy. The date is May 22, 2015.

It is obvious from the name and the design that the BMW 3.0 CSL Hommage is a tribute to the legendary BMW 3.0 CSL. The original 3.0 CSL—often called “Batmobile” because of the shape of its large rear wing, was a class winner at the 24 Hours of Le Mans and overall winner at the 12 Hours of Sebring and Daytona 24 hours. It was also the first BMW racecar to carry the now-familiar BMW Motorsport colors. A BMW 3.0 CSL was also the very first BMW art car.

“Our Hommage cars not only demonstrate how proud we are of our heritage, but also how important the past can be in determining our future,” said Adrian van Hooydonk, Senior Vice President BMW Group Design. “The BMW 3.0 CSL Hommage represents a nod to the engineering achievement exemplified by the BMW 3.0 CSL in its lightweight design and performance. With intelligent lightweight construction and modern materials, the 3.0 CSL Hommage brings the character of that earlier model into the 21st century, showing it in a new and exciting guise,” he added, summarizing the approach his design team took with the BMW 3.0 CSL Hommage.

“CSL” stands for “Coupé Sport Leichtbau” (coupé, sport, lightweight). The original CSL kept down the weight with an aluminum hood, trunk, and doors. The 3.0 CSL Hommage still uses some aluminum, but relies more on carbon-fiber-reinforced plastic (CFRP) to keep it light. BMW is a leading proponent of CFRP, as evidenced by its extensive use in the BMW i3 and i8, and soon on the new 7 Series.

Karim Habib, Head of BMW Design, explained the thinking behind the design of the BMW 3.0 CSL Hommage: “For BMW designers like us, the BMW 3.0 CSL is a style icon. Its combination of racing genes and elegance generates an engaging aesthetic that continues to win hearts even today.” He continued, “The BMW 3.0 CSL Hommage celebrates many of those characteristic features, but without copying them. Indeed, some of the parallels are not immediately obvious. We wanted people to sense the family resemblance rather than see it straight off.”

The BMW 3.0 CSL Hommage’s elongated body features distinctive air deflectors, powerful wheel arches, and prominent roof and tail wings. Air Curtain and Air Breather systems provide optimum ventilation of the wheel housings. The Golf Yellow color chosen by BMW for the 3.0 CSL Hommage was an original color for the first 3.0 CSL.

BMW may have set a record for low and wide front ends with the 3.0 CSL Hommage. The kidney grilles are huge but seem to be oriented more vertically than horizontally, perhaps as a nod to the upright orientation of the original’s grilles. The headlights remain in the traditional configuration, but this time they have LaserLight and LEDs. A large carbon-fiber front splitter belongs there since even the road-going original CSLs had a big air dam up front. From any angle except directly head on, the elongated front intake and splitter are the dominant feature of the 3.0 CSL Hommage.

BMW hasn’t mentioned much about the car’s drivetrain, other than to say the engine is a powerful inline six-cylinder with eBoost. It also appears to have side exhausts.

From the top and sides, the car looks long, accentuated by that low spoiler sticking out in front and the big wing trailing to the rear. The continuous shoulder line gives a nod to the original CSL, and Wilhelm Hofmeister would certainly be proud of the pronounced C-pillar kink. The exaggerated fenders seem incredibly wide, but when compared to the original 3.0 CSL racecars, the width seems perfectly normal. BMW has learned a lot more about aerodynamics since the 1970s, and that is obvious in practically every body panel of the Hommage except perhaps the roof and rear wings.

From the back the car also looks wide. The roof wing is obvious and the big rear wing frames the rear window. BMW included an almost abstract interpretation of the traditional L-shaped taillights, with an LED strip across the top of the wing linking the taillights and ensuring that from the rear, the car looks quite different at night than in daylight.

Minimalist would be a better word for the interior than sparse. The racing character is obvious in the seats, harness, dead pedal, fire bottle and activation switch, kill switch, and even the aircraft-style yoke where the steering wheel should be. A digital screen that presents the driver only necessary information sits square behind the “wheel.” Except for the seat leather, quilted to remind us of the original 3.0 CSL racecars, most of the interior is carbon fiber. Instead of a back seat, BMW put a rack for two racing helmets and the covers for the eBoost accumulators.

Some BMW enthusiasts will be delighted by this new concept, while others will hate it for its radical departure from BMW’s normal evolutionary design approach. We certainly see the family resemblance to the original 3.0 CSL, but we also see some subtle design cues from the BMW i8, which was a radically new design for BMW. The real question here is, why did BMW build it? Is it only a simple tribute to a famous classic BMW, or might we someday see a production car that can trace its roots to this extreme design exercise?—Scott Blazey

[Photos courtesy of BMW AG.]