Packing BMW’s dream machines from 75mph pre-war icons, to the 230mph supercars of the 21st century into an 80,000+ word book project, full of the finest original photographs, was a long held fantasy of author Jeremy Walton. His aim was to move his work from the earlier ‘Unbeatable BMW’ racing tales, to how it feels to drive the best of the best from BMW.
As the project evolved, it became clear that there was just too much material to put into one book, without having to edit out way too much excellent material. Thus, Ultimate Drives became two 12x12-inch, 208-page books, with volume 1 featuring BMWs from the years 1937-82 and volume 2 that will be published soon, with models between 1983-2011.
The contents were hotly debated, the dream factor was deemed important. When worldwide celebrities like Elvis Presley buy BMW (a fifties 507 during his 1958-60 German military service), we thought you should know how it feels to steer such seductively rare combinations of V8 power and the coachbuilders art. So we have some ultra rare—handmade by the hundred—fifties star cars from 503 to 507 and sixties 3200CS, the latter previewing road and race versions of the elegant road (CS/CSi) and race (CSL) BMW coupés of 1969-75 vintage.
