Munich. The glittering comeback is now following one
of the most spectacular classic-car discoveries of recent times. The
BMW 507 was driven by US musician Elvis Presley, famous already at
that time as the “King of Rock’n’Roll”, while he was doing his
military service in Germany. After that it disappeared for nearly 50
years and was believed to have been lost before returning to the
limelight. After almost two years of exacting restoration work, BMW
Group Classic is presenting the roadster for the first time in a
public arena. Restored to its original condition, it will be exhibited
on 21 August 2016 at the Concours d’Elegance in Pebble Beach,
California. The BMW 507 with chassis number 70079 will be on view for
visitors to the popular classic car show exactly as it was when
soldier Elvis Presley took delivery of the car on 20 December 1958:
with paintwork finished in Feather White, the 150 hp V8 aluminium
engine under the bonnet, centre-lock rims, black-and-white interior
and a Becker Mexico radio.
“The opportunity to bring back the BMW 507 owned by the King of
Rock’n’Roll to us here in Munich for purposes of restoration in
accordance with the wishes of the previous owner, Jack Castor, was a
dream come true for all those involved,” commented Ulrich Knieps, Head
of BMW Group Classic. “This was an exceptionally fascinating project.
The outcome is not simply a source of great pride to us. Jack would
undoubtedly have been delighted by the outcome.” In the summer of
2014, the exhibition of the unrestored discovery at the BMW Museum
generated a great deal of excitement among classic car enthusiasts,
but it also threw up questions: Was this really once Elvis’ BMW 507?
And will it even be possible to transform this roadster back into a
jewel of the 1950s?
From “Return to Sender” into “It’s Now or Never”.
The condition of the two-seater really was a cause for concern.
Although the original body parts and other components were virtually
all present and intact, the roadster had lost its engine and gearbox.
The rear axle was a “replacement part” of unknown origin, rust was
eating away the floor assembly, the seats were worn and there was no
instrument panel. However, the fascination of a rare and beguilingly
beautiful automobile outweighed all the inadequacies and deficiencies,
augmented by the memory of Elvis Presley and his greatest hits. While
the roadster came back to Munich under the slogan of “Return to
Sender”, the solution was undoubtedly “It’s Now or Never”. A project
managed by BMW Group Classic succeeded in restoring the automobile.
In-house experts and external specialists joined forces to carry out
the work and the result defined new benchmarks for the restoration of
a BMW 507.
Looking back on the process, the story of Elvis’ BMW 507 and its
restoration is pure Rock’n’Roll: as captivating as the swinging hips
of the “King”, energy sapping, an emotional roller-coaster, and full
of surprising twists and turns. This is not simply a tale about the
young GI Elvis Presley. It is also about the experienced “hillclimb
champion” Hans Stuck, kissable lips daubed on white paint, a retired
space engineer and a warehouse for pumpkins, a Chevy engine that was
much too big, rubberised coconut mats and door handles printed in a 3D
process. And the story already began three years before the “King”
started military service with the US Army stationed in Hesse, Southern Germany.
Myth among rarities: The BMW 507 of the “King”.
The BMW 507 has always been one of the most exclusive and
sought-after rarities in the model history of the brand with just 254
automobiles being produced between 1955 and 1959. Right after its
world premiere at the Frankfurt International Motor Show in 1955, the
two-seater penned by designer Albrecht Graf Goertz was hailed in the
press as the “Dream from the Isar”. Celebrity owners like Alain Delon,
Ursula Andress and John Surtees contributed to the image of the
roadster as a status symbol. However, no other automobile of this
model is shrouded in mythology like the BMW 507 once owned by Elvis
Presley. This particular roadster was believed to have been lost for
almost five decades. In fact, there was not even certainty about the
chassis number of the car driven by the “King”. There were also doubts
about whether Elvis Presley had ever transported the car back to the
USA after he finished his military service in Germany, and nobody knew
anything about the subsequent ownership of the car.
All these puzzles have now been solved thanks to the experts at the
BMW Group Classic Archives and American journalist Jackie Jouret, who
works for “Bimmer” magazine in California. In 2006, she was already
searching through contemporary reports for Elvis’ BMW 507 and relevant
literature going into the history of this model. During the course of
her work, she uncovered an essential detail. Various sources
highlighted the fact that the BMW 507 delivered to Elvis Presley in
Germany was not a brand new automobile but had previously been used by
racing driver Hans Stuck. Between May and August 1958, the racing
driver known as the “Hillclimb Champion” won a number of hillclimbs in
Germany, Austria and Switzerland – in a white BMW 507 with chassis
number 70079 and registration plate M–JX 800. It is also a known fact
verified by photographs that this roadster rolled off the assembly
line on 13 September 1957. A few days later, it was exhibited at the
Frankfurt International Motor Show and repeatedly used for test drives
by the press. As early as October 1957, Hans Stuck presented the car
at the London Motor Show and then drove the roadster through Belgium,
where he presented it to King Baudouin, before motoring down to the
Turin Motor Show. And as if that were not enough, in the summer of
1958, Stuck’s BMW 507 won the automobile beauty competition in
Wiesbaden and then played a role in the Bavaria film studio for the
feature film “Hula-Hopp Conny” with Cornelia Froboess and Rudolf Vogel.
This vehicle had been carefully serviced at BMW after every race, the
engine had been upgraded and a new gearbox fitted when it ended up
with a dealer in Frankfurt in the autumn of 1958. The young US soldier
Presley was 23 at the time, and he came along and took it out on a
test drive for a spin. The “King” was immediately impressed by it and
decided to buy the car. Photos taken at the time show that export
licence plates had already been fitted to the BMW 507. Later on it was
given a registration from the US military that changed every year.
This was part of the reason why subsequent identification of the
vehicle proved to be complicated later on. The experts from the BMW
Group Classic Archives were only absolutely certain about its
provenance when they came across the insurance proposal from December
1958 which contained the chassis number 70079 alongside registration
of the keeper of the vehicle as Elvis Aaron Presley.
Pampered in Germany, radically modified in the USA.
Elvis Presley used the BMW 507 to drive between his home in Bad
Nauheim and the US Army Base in Friedberg. His female fans always kept
a close eye on him and he was often mobbed by them. The paintwork of
the roadster was frequently daubed with messages of love painted in
lipstick. These signs of adoration were by no means unusual for a rock
star but they were an embarrassment to Presley as a young US soldier.
A new livery in Red for the vehicle solved the problem.
In March 1960, Elvis Presley ended his military service in Germany.
Back on American highways, he must have abandoned sheer driving
pleasure in an open-top BMW since a few months later he traded in the
red roadster bearing chassis number 70079 with a Chrysler dealer in
New York. The dealer in turn sold the car for the ridiculously low
price from today’s perspective of 4 500 dollars to radio moderator
Tommy Charles. Charles took the automobile to his home town of
Birmingham in the state of Alabama where a very successful racing
career began, although this move was very questionable when it came to
the issue of authenticity. The BMW 507 was fitted with a Chevrolet
engine in preparation for action on the race track. This took up so
much space that parts of the front frame carrier had to be cut out.
The gearbox and the rear axle, and the instruments in the cockpit were
replaced. Charles won a race in Daytona Beach/Florida with the
radically modified roadster and he lined up on the starting grid in
several more competitions before selling the vehicle in the course of 1963.
Two more changes of ownership followed and the BMW 507 then went to
California. Space engineer Jack Castor acquired the car in 1968 and he
used it occasionally as a runabout for everyday use before deciding to
put the car into storage for a subsequent restoration. Castor was a
passionate collector of historic bicycles and over the years he also
amassed an impressive collection of classic automobiles in Half Moon
Bay to the south of San Francisco. He got involved with several
classic car clubs and delved into the history of the vehicles he had acquired.
The “Holy Grail” in the pumpkin warehouse.
Castor also put together a comprehensive dossier on his BMW 507.
Meanwhile, the engineer had gone into retirement and one day he
happened to see the article in “Bimmer” magazine. Castor wrote to the
author, told her about the BMW 507 with chassis number 70079 that he
owned and invited her over to look at the vehicle. He was aware that
he was the owner of the racing car driven by “hillclimb champion” Hans
Stuck, but up to then he had only been able to speculate about a
potential connection with Elvis. However, Jackie Jouret was absolutely
certain about this issue. She accompanied Jack Castor to a warehouse
for pumpkins where the red BMW 507 was stored alongside other
venerable vehicles. “Jack had tied down its engine bonnet with ropes,”
recalled the journalist when she looked back on the moment of
discovery. “It took some time until we actually got the engine
compartment open and identified the stamped chassis number: 70079, the
Holy Grail among BMW numbers.”
Jack Castor had already collected a large number of parts carefully
stowed in boxes for the planned restoration of the roadster to its
original condition. What he lacked was an appropriate engine and the
necessary time to see the project through. However, things then
started to happen. Jackie Jouret set up the contact with BMW Group
Classic where new information about the identity of the BMW 507 used
by Elvis Presley in Germany was being gathered. This allowed the facts
that had been researched in the USA to be confirmed.
Jack Castor was not interested in making a fast buck out of the
unexpected additional fame of his BMW 507. However, the contact with
BMW Group Classic was strengthened. After several years and a number
of discussions with the experts for restoring classic cars at BMW
Group Classic, Klaus Kutscher and Axel Klinger-Köhnlein, an agreement
was reached. Alongside the purchase of the vehicle by BMW Group
Classic, it also included the authentic restoration of the car along
the lines envisaged by Castor.
By container to the museum – and from there into the workshop.
The time had come in the spring of 2014. The BMW 507 was shipped to
Germany in a container, together with the spare parts collected by
Castor. The first stop in Munich was the BMW Museum where the roadster
was presented to an admiring audience in the special exhibition
“Elvis’ BMW 507 – lost and found”. Work then began on restoration in
the workshop of BMW Group Classic.
As was usual for projects of this nature, phase one was primarily
destructive in nature. The vehicle was completely dismantled, a
process which in this special case took an entire week, rather than
the two days that had been originally planned. Initially, the
aluminium body was separated from the floor assembly made of sheet
steel. This was the only way of retaining as much of the original
material as possible. The paint was then removed from the floor
assembly in an acid bath and from the body in an alkaline bath. The
engine had already been removed and the remnants of the interior that
remained had been set aside.
A lot of components had to be remanufactured from scratch because the
stocks of original parts for the BMW 507 are limited even at BMW Group
Classic. Traditional craftsmanship in the style of the 1950s was
melded with high-tech production procedures of the modern world. The
instrument panel was newly cast on the basis of the original. The
leather upholstery was created to precisely match the pattern shown in
old photographs and catalogues. When the seats were reconstructed, it
proved possible to use the original steel subframe for the seats after
all the rust had carefully been removed. A rubberised coconut mat was
then drawn over the steel springs. This natural material was already
being used in the 1950s for series production of the BMW 507,
alongside the overlaid felt and linen layers to make the seats as
comfortable as possible. Window winders and door handles were
remanufactured in an advanced, modern 3D printing process based on the
original dimensions. After producing a digital data set by
three-dimensional scan of the original part, a facsimile was generated
with the help of additive manufacturing and mirror finished
afterwards. By contrast, the rubber seal for the tank cover was
reproduced in a conventional manufacturing procedure. Since this
component like many others in the BMW 507 had fallen prey to the
ravages of time, a small series was produced. This means that roadster
users are now able to source this spare part in the parts shop of BMW
Group Classic.
The BMW 507 makes a comeback – it’s just like the car Hans
Stuck drove, the one Elvis purchased, and this is the way Jack
Castor wanted it.
The engine for Elvis’ BMW 507 was completely rebuilt from spare
parts. The 3.2 litre V8 engine was reconditioned precisely in
conformity with the original specifications of the BMW 507, but it was
not given an engine number on account of the unavoidable but otherwise
unusual use of old and new components. The front frame carrier, which
had been cut down at an early stage, also had to be reproduced in its
original geometry and integrated in the floor assembly. The wooden
nailing strip for fixing the soft top in place was also reproduced
using materials and processing methods in keeping with the 1950s.
Maximum authenticity was also the objective in painting the vehicle.
The BMW 507 is now resplendent once again in Feather White. The primer
coat, the filler and the top coat were not applied by the methods that
are commonplace today. Rather, they were implemented in a procedure
that corresponds to the technology in use some 60 years ago. This
enabled the excessive colour brilliance to be avoided which is
considered desirable nowadays but is inappropriate for classic cars.
Similar to the reconstruction of the V8 engine and the use of
true-to-original parts and production procedures, the selection of
paintwork also corresponds precisely to the conditions defined by Jack
Castor. Right from the start, he wanted to restore the roadster to the
original condition it was supplied in back in 1958. However, his
aspiration to be able to see the BMW 507 through the eyes of the
“King” remained unfulfilled. Jack Castor passed away at the age of 77
in November 2014. We will therefore remember him at Pebble Beach. The
BMW 507 will be presented there for the first time not simply as the
automobile of the “King”, but also as the legacy of Jack Castor and a
masterpiece of BMW Group Classic.