BMW-CARS

The BMW CS, produced from 1968 to 1975 and known internally as the E9 (or to its many ardent admirers, simply “the coupe”) is often mentioned among the most beautiful BMWs ever built. It also ranks among the most delicate. Rust goblins gorged on its lithe body and undercarriage even in dry climates. Engines powered by carburetors protested violently under cold starts. Even so, the CS’s cult, next to that of the 2002 coupe, is fiercely dedicated.

Such devotion was given a unique platform recently at the BMW Classic Center at BMW Welt in Munich, where a 1972 3.0 CSi was driven out of the center’s workshop with much fanfare after a lengthy, intensive restoration.

The occasion heralded the workshop’s first completed project and what company executives hoped would become a trend among vintage BMW owners: electing for restoration at the mother ship.

To attract them, the Classic Center positions itself more as a museum’s special-collections workshop than a garage. For the 3.0 CSi restoration, mechanics used brand archives while performing a transmission transplant requested by the client, for which an automatic from a 2800 CS was swapped for the original 4-speed manual gearbox. According to BMW, only two 3.0 CSi prototypes were ever fitted with automatics, compelling the restorers to hunt outside the 3.0 series.

“We have old construction plans for tools,” Manfred Grunert, BMW’s communications director, said by e-mail, emphasizing the bespoke nature of Classic Center restorations. In the event a tooling technique no longer exists, the workshop recreates it from scratch. “The construction plans are used as matrixes for building new ones,” he said.

Such attention to detail takes time, and money. Mr. Grunert declined to reveal the full cost of the Classic Center workshop’s maiden restoration project and the identity of the 3.0 CSi customer, though he did note that “everything between a service for a classic car for 300 euros and a complete restoration for several hundred thousand is possible. It depends on the car and the list of wishes of the customer.”

Ultimately, a Classic Center workshop restoration might not always appear on paper to be a sound value proposition, but as any vintage-car tinkerer knows, return-on-investment is a relative calculation in the semisacred realm of the garage.

“If we’re talking top-to-bottom CS restoration, with original switches, fresh surfaces, paint, the whole nine yards, then you’re talking up to six figures,” said Chris Keefer, owner of La Jolla Independent BMW Service in Southern California. “Unfortunately, after all that, the car will still only be worth about $40,000.”