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The Forgotten BMW Concept That Ended Up as Someone's Daily Driver
By JACOB SUAREZ
In 1969, BMW partnered with Italian design house Bertone to develop the 2800 Bertone Spicup. Based on their close relationship, Bertone felt confident BMW would want to work together to debut engineer Enzo Cingolani's newly developed version of a retractable roof, which became the focal point of the concept car.
An amalgam of the words "spider" and "coupe," the Spicup was based on BMW's E3 saloon (pictured above), rather than the E9 chassis the Spicup shared a namesake with. It sported a 2.8L straight-six engine under the hood, part-hidden headlights design, and a roof that retracted its steel panels into the roll bar.
Unfortunately, BMW would never put the Spicup into production, and it all but disappeared until it was found on display at a German exotic car dealer in the mid-1970s. But that wasn't the end of the road for the beautiful Beamer thanks to the eventual owner, who cherished the car and used it for its intended purpose: driving.
The Spicup presumably went into storage in the ‘80s, only to appear again in 2008 after a lengthy restoration, after all, most of its parts had to be rebuilt from scratch as it’s a one-of-a-kind car. In 2011, the Spicup was sold for nearly half a million Euros and is currently a fixture at the BMW Museum in Munich.