The Key 2018 - Elvis' 507 Before & After

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Elvis’ 507 Before & After Found in the US abandoned, repainted in red and without an engine, the BMW 507 bought

by Elvis Presley during the military service in Europe was brought back to its magnificent original beauty by BMW Classic.

by Massimo Delbo

Elvis, already a Rock Star as shown by the number of fans in this picture, receives the keys of his freshly bought 507.

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ELVIS’ 507 BEFORE & AFTER // 39

I

n 1958, 23-year-old heartthrob Elvis Presley was riding on a wave of global success. Already considered the most iconic singer of the time, he had also developed a passion for expensive cars.

On the other side of the Atlantic, things were far less rosy for German car manufacturer Bayerische Motoren Werke, better known as BMW. The company, founded in 1916, was almost twice Presley’s age, but it found itself in very different circumstances, still struggling to recover after the devastation of WWII. BMW certainly paid a high price for the conflict: Some of its production plants, located in the Soviet-controlled German Democratic Republic, were lost to the West German company, while the USA had banned German manufacturers from building airplane engines, and the British had become legal owners of the tooling and manufacturing rights of the pre-war BMW six-cylinder engine. This engine, installed on the iconic 328, represented the basis of BMW’s production. It is hardly surprising, then, that the Munich-based company struggled to get back on its feet. Only able to offer a large V8 sedan, too expensive to be viable in the then severely impoverished Germany, the company needed to follow a completely new direction, and start building utilitarian cars.

A German Supercar with an American Air In 1956, BMW launched the 507, a modern, exciting supercar with a V8 engine displacing 3.2 liters and generating 150 HP. The company’s aim was to break into the wealthy American market with an attractive and profitable sports car that might allow the brand to regain its prewar status. But fate, together with some mistakes, prevented this from happening. The final car cost much more than had been anticipated, and considerably more than the 300 SL marketed by the company’s more established competitor, Mercedes-Benz. In the end, BMW sold only 252 507s in total, plus two prototypes, which is perhaps just as well, considering it made a loss on each one built.

The 507 made its debut at the Frankfurt International Motor Show in November 1955, and was launched on the American market the following spring. It was initially offered at USD 9,000 but this soon rose to USD 10,500 (just over twice the retail price originally envisaged). The 507 was a great car with a top speed of 200 kmph and an exclusive aluminum body designed by Albrecht Graf Goertz, which was almost

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entirely hand formed. For this reason, it caught the attention of some of the most wealthy car lovers of the period, including famous ones like the aforementioned “King of Rock’n’Roll”, Elvis Presley. In 1958, Elvis was doing military service in the small city of Friedberg (Hessen).

In late December that year, he spotted what later became known as the “Elvis 507” in a Frankfurt dealer’s used car lot. After a short test drive, he bought the car (his first 507) on the spot: chassis #70079 was painted in Feather White and sported center-lock rims, a black-and-white interior and a Becker Mexico radio. The 15-month-old car had already lived an intense life: A few days after rolling off the assembly line (on September 13th, 1957), it appeared at the Frankfurt International Motor Show and was repeatedly used for test drives by the press. The following month it was paired with legendary racing driver Hans Stuck, who exhibited it at the London Motor Show and then drove it to Belgium, to show it to King Baudouin, before motoring down to the Turin Motor Show.

In 1958, Stuck and the 507 (registration plate M-JX 800) were still together, and between May and August 1958 they entered, and won, numerous hill climbs in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, as well as the Concours d’Elegance in Wiesbaden. The car also had a part in the movie Hula-Hopp Conny starring Cornelia Froboess and Rudolf Vogel. After this, the 507, carefully serviced at BMW after every race, was given a new gearbox but kept its upgraded engine. It then found its way to the Frankfurt used car lot where Elvis Presley saw it. Presley registered it with a temporary US military plate. These military plates were changed every year, and decades later this complicated the task for car historians trying to piece together the car’s early history.

Presley used his BMW 507 to drive between his home and the US Army Base in Friedberg. A victim of his own success, Elvis found that his female fans would write messages on its white body in lipstick.

Needing to find a way to solve this problem, he had the car repainted in red. In March 1960, at the end of his military service in Germany, Elvis shipped the car to the USA and a few months later sold it to a Chrysler dealer in New York.

This was his first 507, but not his last: in 1963 he purchased chassis #70192 as a gift for Ursula Andress who starred with him in “Fun in Acapulco.”

After completely dismantling the car, the recovery of the original chassis and body and the reconstruction of the missing parts.

Interiors: before & after. The extraordinary work done by BMW Classic brought the interiors back to their original splendor.

First red and then white, as it was originally. The 507 that Elvis bought when he was 23 years old.

ELVIS’ 507 BEFORE & AFTER // 41

Meanwhile, the Chrysler dealer quickly sold chassis #70079 (for 4,500 USD). Its new owner, radio host Tommy Charles, took it to his home town of Birmingham (Ala.) with the idea of racing it. He fitted it with a Chevrolet V8 engine, although he had to cut away part of the front frame in order to fit it under the hood. He also replaced the gearbox, rear axle and cockpit instruments. The resulting “hot rod” won Charles a race in Daytona Beach (Fla.) and also competed in several more competitions before being sold at the end of 1963.

In 1968, after two more changes of ownership, the BMW 507 was purchased by space engineer Jack Castor, who lived near San Francisco. Castor, a passionate classic car collector, used the car occasion-

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ally before putting it into storage, intending to restore it. First, he needed to put together a comprehensive dossier on the car and gather the parts necessary for the work. He knew it had been raced in period by Stuck, and that sourcing a correct engine would not be easy, but he was not aware of the car’s link with Presley. He learned of this much later from the editor of Bimmer magazine, Jackie Julet, who put him in touch with BMW Group Classic in Munich to have the car and its history double-checked.

It was the BMW archive experts who found the “smoking gun,” in the form of an insurance proposal dated December 1958 which confirmed that chassis #70079 had indeed been registered to one Elvis Aaron Presley.

You wouldn’t tell at first glance… but it’s the same car! Even the logo, ruined by time, is brought back to its original beauty.

The Art of Letting Go It took the classic department of BMW years to convince Castor to sell them the car, and finally to start (in 2014) the complex restoration work, which was made particularly difficult by the need to find a correct engine. Although the main objective was to save as much as possible of the original material, some components, completely unavailable on the market, had to be remanufactured from scratch.

A new instrument panel was cast, on the basis of the original, while the seats were reconstructed, keeping the original, restored, steel subframes, and the window winders and door handles were re-manufactured by 3D printing. The engine was completely rebuilt from spare parts, in conformity

with the BMW 507 original specifications, but, being a composition of old and new parts, it was not given an engine number. The front frame, which had been cut down to make room for the American V8, had to be reproduced in its original geometry and integrated into the floor assembly, while the missing gearbox was replaced with a correct one. Care was also taken to ensure authentic paintwork, and the car now sports its original color combination.

The car is currently on display in the BMW Zentrum museum in Greer (S.C.) wearing pristine white paint perfect for some new lipstick tributes! Not a bad ending to the story of a car that stayed under the radar for nearly 50 years.

ELVIS’ 507 BEFORE & AFTER // 43

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Together again.

She is beautiful as in the 50s. Elvis, always with us, with his guitar.

ELVIS’ 507 BEFORE & AFTER // 45

THE K E Y T O THE

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2018

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