Here's How A Sebring Win 50 Years Ago Set BMW And Bob Lutz Up For Success In America

In 1975 BMW was in an interesting position in the United States as it began launching BMW North America branded dealerships across the country for the first time. The vast majority of Americans still thought BMW stood for British Motor Works, the brand had been distributed through Max Hoffman for decades by this point, and the brand needed a revamp. Enter Maximum Bob Lutz, who had come onboard at BMW as executive vice president of sales, and was a strong advocate for BMW going all-in on racing. Instead of continuing to support privateers Schnitzer and Alpina, BMW would start its own motorsport division and bring its touring car-winning 3.0 CSL to the top of IMSA competition. An unwelcome engine issue ended the car's Daytona debut prematurely, but the second round of the championship at Sebring went very different for the BMW team with Alan Moffat, Brian Redman, Hans-Joachim Stuck, and Sam Posey taking the victory. That single event set the whole company off in the right direction in the U.S.

"We knew how racing is for marketing the brand, and in Sebring we knew that we were competitive and able to do a good job... I think for us it was, let's say, a big moment to be sure. That we could successfully continue," BMW Motorsport head Jochen Neerpasch told Motorsport. "We did not win all the races, we did lose races, but we were competitive, and that was very important."

Bob Lutz only spent three years at BMW, but he had already earned a reputation for being the brash go-getter kind of executive who gets things done, and set the company on the path that would take it to where it is today. When Alpina developed a lightweight version of the company's large coupe, Lutz pushed the company to build the 1,000 homologation units needed to be eligible for Group 2 racing so that it could fight against the Ford Capri and Porsche 911 RSR on even ground, and later build a Group 4 racer with the silhouette "Batmobile" CSL. He made sure BMW picked up Neerpasch as competition director for the brand, stolen from Ford. It was also Lutz who was in charge of pushing BMW to develop its own distribution in North America. Lutz himself left for Ford in the middle of 1974, but the die was already cast and the chips were down. Within a week of each other, BMW concluded its legal dealings with Hoffman officially kicking off BMWNA, and won the 12 Hours of Sebring, both huge wins for the brand. 

BMW

The 1975 12 Hours of Sebring was a straight fight between Porsche and BMW for the win. With two cars from the factory M team in the race, BMW set the #24 car of Hans Stuck and Sam Posey out as a hare to run as fast as possible in order to push the leading Brumos Porsche to its breaking point, a strategy which worked, but also caused that BMW to fail in the process. The #25 car of Brian Redman and Alan Moffat, meanwhile, was intended to run a more steady pace to bring the car home and ideally take the win. Brian Redman apparently committed the largest share of the driving, putting in seven hours behind the wheel during the twelve-hour race. The remaining five hours were given to Moffat and, once their car exploded, Stuck and Posey sat in for stints as well. While the #25 struggled with alternator issues late in the race, the team of four ultimately went on to take the win by over three laps, with the rest of the podium made up of privateer Porsches. That feat was made all the more monumental by the fact that a full 16 Porsche 911 RSRs had entered the race that year. 

With the 2025 running of the 12 Hours of Sebring kicking off today, BMW is looking back on 50 years of success in North America under its own terms. BMW M is the foundation of BMW in the U.S. market, and this weekend the team is going for another overall victory. Bavarian Motor Works has just two overall victories at the long-running endurance event, taking its second in 1999 with the legendary BMW V12 LMR prototype. If the brand can find success this weekend, it would be a stellar cap on this 50th anniversary celebration, and a win in three completely different eras of international motorsport. Good luck specifically to the #25 car.