BMW only built 254 507 Roadsters between 1956 and '59. Two of which were prototypes. Some were turned into race cars, but three chassis were transformed into something completely different. This is one of those.
But first, let's see another one, the Raymond Loewy 507, which was built in France by Pichon et Parat of Sens, the car Travis called "the coolest car at Pebble." According to Hemmings, an eyewitness at the Paris Motor Show summed up the result like this:
It’s fair to assume that someone said to Raymond Lowey: ‘I’d like to go to the masked ball with a BMW 507, can you dream something up…?’ And the master created something that snaps at the front and from the side looks something like a doodle you might scribble on a writing block during a telephone conversation.
Both gentlemen had a point.
The other chassis ended up with a much more conventional body. The BMW 507 was very much the idea of the American importer Max Hoffman, and famed Italian designer Giovanni Michelotti wasn't fond of the newcomer German Albrecht von Goertz's original creation. Therefore as an alternative, he presented a new body for the car at the 1959 Turin Motor Show:
No wonder he ended up at Triumph in England. After his long British affair though, Michelotti did end up making BMWs once again, starting with the 700 that saved the company, and acting as a design consultant during the development of the New Class.
They decided to put normal sized badges on those...
Photo credit: BMW