Beemers weren’t badged as BMWs at this Le Mans

by Bill Buys

BMW fielded a trio of its successful 328 sports cars in the Le Mans 24-Hour of 1939.

But unlike any of the other cars, which were entered by their manufacturers or privateers, the white 328s bore the NSKK logo of the Nationalsozialistisches Kraftfahrkorps, or National Socialist Motor Corps.

Yes, officially entered by the German Government, which had commissioned the company to build three very special versions of the 328.

The sleek sports cars first appeared at Nurburgring in 1936 where they dominated the 2.0litre class, followed by more success in 1937, including the RAC Tourist Trophy and the La Turbie hillclimb.

So, building on the success of the original, three special ones (chassis 85335, 85336, and 85337) were ordered for two major races in 1939: the ‘Mille Miglia Africana’ and Le Mans.

Key to their success was their advanced construction, which employed lightweight tubular frame construction and stressed aluminium bodywork. Their rivals mostly still had bodies mounted on ladder chassis.

The 2.0litre straight-six high compression engine featured overhead valves, hemispherical combustion chambers and triple Solex 30 IF downdraft carburetters to make about 135bhp (100kW) compared to 85bhp (63kW) in standard form.

They also had larger capacity fuel tanks, extra instrumentation, plexiglass windscreens, 17-inch light alloy wheels, hydraulically-assisted drum brakes, a lightened rear axle and drive to the rear wheels was via a four-speed Hurth gearbox.

The 1938 Mille Miglia was shrouded in tragedy when 10 spectators were killed and 23 injured when an amateur driver lost control of his Lancia which ploughed into a crowd.

Italy immediately stopped all motor sport – but the Mille Miglia lived on, albeit across the Mediterranean to Libya, which was then an Italian territory.

It event was run between Tobruk and Tripoli on March 26, 1939 and attracted works entries from all the top teams.

BMW chassis number 85335 was crewed by Prince Max Schaumburg-Lippe and Ralf Röese, and they had a great run, finishing fifth overall and second in class, giving BMW a clean sweep of the 2.0litre category.

The team's next outing was at the 24 Hours of Le Mans on June 17, 1939.

What a race it was!

Le Mans, at the time, was run on narrow farm roads south of town and there were incidents aplenty.

Favoured to win was local driver Jean Trémoulet in a Talbot-Lago SS, who had won in 1938 in a Delahaye 135CS.

However, three hours into the race, Trémoulet’s Talbot-Lago started dropping oil, which caused mayhem behind him as cars skidded and spun.

The marshals tried to flag him in, but he ignored them for several laps as he turned the 12.8km-long circuit into a skating rink.

At the 90-degree right-hander at Arnage, Anne-Cécile Rose-Itier, one of the race’s two female drivers, slid into the embankment and rolled her Simca.

Jean Breillet, also in a Simca, spun wildly and was thrown from the car 7m over a hedge. He survived with only bruises and André Bellecroix lost control of his Delahaye at 190km/h, hit several trees and crashed into a house. He was taken away in an ambulance that had to circle the track among the racing cars.

When Trémoulet finally pitted, the crowd gave him a thorough booing.

The three little BMWs raced on, their only real competition in class an Aston Martin 2.0-litre Speed, a bigger version of Aston’s 1935 class winner.

However, at the finish, the BMW 328 coupe of Prince Max von Schaumburg-Lippe and Fritz Hans Wenscher led the class, finishing fifth overall.

Röese and Heinemann took second in class, seventh overall in the No. 27 car, and the No. 28 car of Willy Briem and Rudolf Scholtz wrapped up BMW’s sweep of the 2.0-litres, and finished ninth overall.

Race winners that year were Jean-Pierre Wimille and Pierre Veyron in a supercharged Bugatti Type 57C “Tank” at an average speed of 139km/h.

Three months later, Germany invaded Poland and started WWII.

BMW’s special trio made their final competitive outing at Belgrade's Kalemegdan Park road course in early September that year.

The race got little coverage due to the war, but records held by BMW confirmed that Röese drove 85335 to finish second overall.

Then the car disappeared.

After the Belgrade Grand Prix, 85335 seems to have been retired by the team and although its sister chassis were rescued, restored, and joined prestigious collections -- 85335's whereabouts remained a mystery.

Chassis #85335 was thought to have been scrapped.

Most people assumed the car had been scrapped.

But somehow the car ended up in the US.

Few Americans had ever heard of a BMW in the late 1940s or early ’50s, and when this 328 is thought to have arrived stateside 24 years later, it was in the care of Carl Reitzel, of Newark, New Jersey.

He then sold it to Ferrari dealer and collector James P. McAllister of Port Jefferson, New York in August 1966.

The car passed from grandfather to grandson, undergoing a restoration in the 1990s that disguised it as a regular production BMW 328.

It had been made to look like a normal 328 road car and many of its race-bred parts had been removed, but luckily its custodians had the forethought to keep all the bits.

Itt remained in the McAllister family during the 1980s in the care of Jeffrey McAllister, who had it restored for vintage racing.

He occasionally brought 85335 to regional concours and vintage races in the next two decades, and as word got out, marque enthusiasts approached him with tales of its remarkable pre-war life.

By 2017, the car’s then-owner had become aware that it might be the missing ’39 Le Mans team car and Mille Miglia Africana veteran, and approached Daniel Rapley, a classic car dealer in Connecticut.

Rapley had a potential buyer in Stephen Bruno, who has a stable of special Ferraris. But Mr Bruno was a very particular man and might be interested only if the car’s provenance could be authenticated.

“I always look for the rarest of the rare,” he said. On a rally once, he saw an earlier BMW 328, the one with cycle-type mudguards that was the company’s first production sports car.

Fewer than 500 were built between 1936 and 1940, and Bruno wanted one. But he wanted “the rarest of the rare.”

And he got it,

To be certain of his potential purchase, he paid to fly Klaus Kutscher from BMW Group Classic in Munich over to inspect the car.

He spent hours checking every part of the car and verified 85335's remarkable provenance as well as the survival of its key original componentry, and pronounced the No. 27 car found.

It then became Mr Bruno’s.

It was only the beginning of the spending, since Bruno wanted to return the car to its racing condition down to the single windshield, centre driving light, and other bits.

For that, he turned to D L George Historic Motorcars in Cochranville, Pennsylvania, which did the ground-up restoration.

Fortunately, some of the competition parts that had been stripped off in the ’90s restoration had been packed away in attic boxes. The owner thought they were mods added to the car in the ’50s or ’60s but, thankfully, saved them.

In fact, they were on the car when it raced at Le Mans in 1939.

The results of the herculean effort were rewarded when 85335 scored a third place in the ultra-competitive Early Le Mans class on its debut at the 2022 Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance.

And that’s the story of one of the most significant BMW competition cars ever to come up for sale. With its total restoration and verified, irrefutable provenance, it’s a ticket to many of the world's most exclusive concours and road rallies including the Mille Miglia, Le Mans Classic, and Goodwood Revival.

It’s still available.

It came up on auction in May, 2024, with a price guide of US$1.5-2million, but was not sold. That’s about $3m Australian if you’d like to make an offer to its owner.