Breathtaking resurrection of BMW M1 Procar - Northern Star
As well as taking the road-going fight to Porsche and Ferrari, BMW wanted a competitive machine to participate in the popular Group 4 and Group 5 racing series' of the day. The project was plagued by delays, preventing BMW taking the M1 racing immediately in Group 4 (it needed to build 400 road-going M1s to meet homologation rules), so the German company created the Procar Series where identical Group 4 M1s were... At the 1979 Suzuka 500km it finished first in class and fourth outright, while in 1980 it was class winner at the Mt Fuji 500km, 500 mile and 1000. and in 1981 class winner at the Fuji 1000km. It was sold to Auto Beaurex in 1981 and converted to... From 1983 it was kept in storage and only rarely used at track days, before Chris Bowden found it on a trip to Japan searching for Group A cars. "Chris went back to Japan with dad (David Bowden, pictured right) and they started six or seven months of negotiation to buy the M1," his brother Dan Bowden said. Dan Bowden said the Bowden's example is the only BMW M1 Procar in the country, and there are only two or possibly three road-going M1s in Australia. Source: www.northernstar.com.au
