Let's say you're out for a drive one day in your E39 M5, and through no fault of your own, you get squeezed between a ratty old pickup truck and the center guardrail, and every piece of sheet metal on your pride and joy is ruined. You're bummed out—but you have another BMW back in the garage. So you take your vintage E9 3.0 CS out for a pleasant consolation drive when all of a sudden through no fault of your own, you spill hot coffee all over the inside, miss a shift, lunch the transmission, and blow up the engine.
What could you possibly do with those two wrecks?
This. Put the pristine 3.0 CS body on top of the M5 chassis, drivetrain, and interior, and drive away happy.
While you personally may not have the skills to pull off this trick, MKO GmbH in Germany does, and they did.
There is nothing wrong with the styling of the E39 BMW 5 Series, and in another decade or two, it may be looked upon with the reverence that the three-liter big coupes of the 1970s command. Until then, we may gaze with awe upon this gorgeous silver coupe while knowing it hides a secret underneath. It’s like the superhero M5 needed a slightly more mild secret identity.
The car retains the M5’s electronics and safety features. It has airbags, antilock brakes, and a navigation system, although some would argue that the E39’s nav system is almost as dated as the 3.0 CS’s looks.
If you like it a lot, it appears to be for sale at about €178,000, including the German value-added tax. Good luck trying to explain the car to the DOT and EPA if you want to bring it to the U.S.
We don’t know how this car came to be and what the conditions were of the two donor cars. Purists will rail against the desecration of original BMWs, while plain ol’ car guys will admire the creativity and looks of the finished product.
We're pretty sure that if one of these showed up on the orphanage’s door step, we’d take it in.—Scott Blazey
For more photos and information in German, check out http://www.mko-v8.de/projekte/66.html
[Photos courtesy of MKO-V8.]
