BMW 328 Racing History

The meeting ran several races, and Motor Sport's reporter broke off from one of them to look at the sports cars.

Berg's Alfa Romeo ran in the supercharged class and finished 2nd on the road. In Henne's class the next car home was Paul Schweder's Adler.

Two weeks later all three prototypes ran in the sports-car Grand Prix de l'ACF at Montlhéry, over 1,000 km (621 miles): Henne and Kohlrausch in 85001, Fritz Roth and Kautz in 85002, H. J. Aldington and A. F. P. Fane in 85003 (the register of notable cars follows each one). None finished, and the two-litre class went to Trévoux and MacLure's Riley. In August, BMW says, Aldington won the Schleissheim triangle race near Munich; racingsportscars lists him in 85001 at Munich on 9 August, without a place.

The Ards Tourist Trophy, run on a road circuit outside Belfast on 5 September, was a handicap race of 30 laps, and the three prototypes ran in it in green as the Frazer Nash-BMW team, entered by AFN, BMW's British importer. They had been prepared in Germany, Motor Sport noted, and German mechanics ran their pits, except Bira's, where Prince Chula was in charge. The roads were wet for most of the day. Freddie Dixon and Charles Dodson's Riley won on handicap from E. R. Hall's Bentley, Fane was 3rd overall, and the three 328s were the first three cars of the two-litre class to finish. They won the team prize, at the highest average at which it had ever been won, the magazine added, and Fane left the class lap record at 129.7 km/h (80.61 mph).⁠source 2​source 5​source 3​source 1​source 6

Customers' cars began to race in 1937, BMW says, a year after the 328's debut. Fritz Roth won the sports-car race at Helsinki on 9 May; Henne won the Grand Prix des Frontières at Chimay, in Belgium, on 15 May, with Ralph Roese 2nd, and the Grand Prix of Bucharest on 30 May. At Chimay, at Bucharest and at the Eifel meeting, AFN's W. H. Aldington wrote the next March, BMWs made the fastest time of the day.

BMW counted nine 328s on the grid at the Eifelrennen on 13 June. Motor Sport found a fine day there, "after the rain and fog of previous years", and expected a duel between Henne and Fane, who had a works car, No. 39, entered by BMW. Henne led away, Fane passed him before the end of the first lap, and on the descent to Hocheichen Henne, trying "to catch the flying Englander", crashed and was taken away with injured shoulders. Fane won at 108.3 km/h (67.31 mph), from Uli Richter and Paul Heinemann, with BMWs in the next five places of the class; his average beat that of the winner of the supercharged two-litre class. Motor Sport called his car by AFN's name.

A week later three 328s started at Le Mans: one entered by BMW for Roth and Richter, and two Frazer Nash-BMWs, AFN's for Aldington and Fane and David Murray's, shared with Pat Fairfield. On the 8th lap one accident took six cars out of the race, Roth's and Murray's among them. Fairfield was killed, and so was a French driver new to racing, in a Bugatti; Roth escaped. Motor Sport counted what it cost the team: "two out of the three cars emanating from the German factory were eliminated in one fell swoop". Aldington and Fane's car lasted 43 laps, and the two-litre class went to an Adler. "It was not a B.M.W. day," the magazine concluded.⁠source 3​source 7​source 1​source 2​source 8​source 9

At home AFN raced its own car too. In the Donington Twelve Hours of 24 July Aldington led the race outright after three hours; with Fane driving, the Frazer Nash-BMW led its class by 20 laps after six, and at about three-quarters distance, 2nd in the race and far ahead in its class, it had to be withdrawn with a failing gearbox (transmission). A Delahaye won, and the class that, Motor Sport said, everyone had expected the BMW to win went to a Wolseley Hornet.

On 4 September the Tourist Trophy was run in England for the first time, over 100 laps of a Donington circuit lengthened for the race, 502 km (312 miles), with a handicap of credit laps and time. AFN entered four white works cars with German mechanics in their pit, and B. Bira took Henne's place after his own Delahaye failed in practice. The start went wrong for one of them.

Hector Dobbs's car had broken its differential. The German mechanics spent more than two hours on its back axle, because it was one of the three cars nominated as the team, Motor Sport explained, and Fane had orders to win "or burst". Fane led the race on handicap until Gianfranco Comotti's Darracq passed him after three-quarters of an hour; then his own back axle failed, an experimental ball race at half distance by AFN's account. Comotti won at 110.6 km/h (68.7 mph) from René Le Bègue, in another Darracq. Bira was 3rd, and Aldington 8th after a misfire and two stops to change plugs, while Dobbs's car went out with more transmission trouble, and no team finished. In its letter of March 1938 AFN called the race a fight between the BMWs and French cars of more than twice their engine size, and put the BMWs three seconds a lap faster than the Darracqs.⁠source 10​source 4​source 11​source 2​source 7

The year began with the Mille Miglia in April, told with the race of 1940 below. Paul Heinemann won at the Hamburg Stadtpark on 8 May, in a car entered by the NSKK. At Antwerp on 22 May a new race, on a flat circuit of just under 6.4 km (four miles), drew more than 100,000 people, and four white BMWs ran in the class under two litres: Roese won at 122.4 km/h (76.1 mph), from Willi Briem and Heinemann, with Prince Max zu Schaumburg-Lippe 5th behind a Riley. Kurt Illmann, Heinrich von der Mühle-Eckart and Adolf Brudes were 1st, 2nd and 3rd at the Avus on 27 May, and Roese won at Chimay on 5 June.

The Spa 24 Hours of 9–10 July was run in torrential rain. BMW sent three cars. At quarter-distance Briem and Scholtz led the two-litre class by seven seconds from Heinemann and Brudes, and on the Sunday morning Schaumburg-Lippe and Roese were ahead. A hailstorm came that morning: "Those in open cars were envying their lucky rivals in the closed Adlers and Lancias," Motor Sport wrote. With a few minutes left, many drivers stopped on the downhill run to the pits so as not to start another lap, and waited there, two abreast, for the 24th hour to run out. As four o'clock struck, the queue moved on to the line.

Each had covered 180 laps, 2,675.52 km (1,662.5 miles). They were placed 3rd, 4th and 5th overall, behind Pintacuda and Severi's winning Alfa Romeo and a Delage, and the King of the Belgians' Cup for the best team went to them "without a shadow of doubt"; they had run together all race.

Two weeks later, at the German Grand Prix meeting at the Nürburgring on 24 July, Paul Greifzu won the sports-car race from Huschke von Hanstein and Heinemann, in a field in which 17 BMW 328s were entered. Fritz Unzner and Richter were 1st and 2nd at Hockenheim on 16 October.⁠source 3​source 12​source 2​source 13

The season's long road race was in Libya. On 26 March the field ran 1,500 km (about 930 miles) from Tobruk to Tripoli, mostly along the coast, and BMW sent "the usual trio", in Motor Sport's phrase: Schaumburg-Lippe, Briem and Heinemann. An Alfa Romeo won, six minutes ahead of Briem, and the three 328s were 1st, 2nd and 3rd in the two-litre class, "although not in the line-ahead formation that they are so fond of". In May Helmut Polensky won at Hamburg with Briem 2nd, and on 28 May Roese won at Chimay again.

At Le Mans on 17–18 June BMW ran the Touring coupé, whose race its own page tells, and two roadsters. At half-distance, four o'clock on the Sunday morning, the three were 8th, 10th and 12th. By the end they were 5th, 7th and 9th, the roadsters having covered 230 and 220 laps. Motor Sport gave them one sentence near the end of its report.

The crowd, it added, gave "a rousing cheer" to the BMWs as well as to the Lagondas, the Aston Martin and the HRG. Von Hanstein, entered in an Adler, did not start after an accident in practice.

328s won through the summer: Heinemann at Bucharest on 25 June, and von Hanstein at Schotten on 9 July, with Briem and Heinemann behind him. At Belgrade on 3 September 1939 Roese was 2nd.⁠source 14​source 3​source 15​source 16

In Britain the RAC Rally of 1939 had 225 entries and 200 starters, and after a road section it ended at Brighton with a set of tests: a hill-climb with a reverse past a pylon half-way up, a start from cold, a braking test and a last timed run round a hairpin and a sharp turn. Leslie Johnson made the fastest climb of all in his 328, in 22.0 seconds. Fane, "who drove like the master he is", set the best time of all in the final test, 41.4 seconds.

The results were given class by class. Fane's 328 was the outstanding car of its class, and both team prizes went to the Frazer Nash-BMWs of Fane, Murray and Johnson.

Tommy Wisdom, who drove an SS 100 in the rally, gave his own verdict, as Motor Sport reported it: "Germany gave us a sound drubbing."⁠source 17

The 328 ran in the Mille Miglia twice, and BMW 328 Mille Miglia tells both races. In April 1938, over more than 1,600 km (1,000 miles) of Italian roads, the class for two-litre cars went to Fane, AFN's driver, at the wheel of one of BMW's works cars entered in Frazer Nash's name, and the other works cars took its next three places. Two years later the race was nine laps of a closed circuit of public roads from Brescia, and on 28 April 1940 the Touring coupé won it outright, driven by von Hanstein and Walter Bäumer, and BMW's roadsters finished 3rd, 5th and 6th. "The B.M.W.s were controlled with typical German care of detail," Motor Sport reported; nine Alfa Romeos started against them.⁠source 18​source 19​source 20​source 21

On the car's way back from Northern Ireland in September 1936, Jenkinson wrote, Fane drove 85003 at Shelsley Walsh and won the award for the fastest car of the Tourist Trophy type. In Germany, BMW says, von Hanstein became the sports-car hill-climb champion of 1938 in a 328. On the Grossglockner on 6 August 1939 the NSKK entered 328s for Briem, Greifzu and Heinemann, and von Hanstein ran one of his own; racingsportscars lists them without their places.⁠source 22​source 23​source 3

Racingsportscars' lists give the works cars two German entrants. At the international races, from the Eifelrennen of 1936 to Brescia in 1940, the entrant is BMW, or BMW Werke; for several German races in 1938–39, among them Hamburg and the Grossglockner, it is the NSKK. When Fane won the Eifelrennen in 1937, Motor Sport reported, he "made a triumphant circuit of the course with the great Korpsfuhrer Huhnlein in the second seat", and in 1939 the magazine named the NSKK as the BMW team's entrant in Libya.

In Britain the same works cars carried AFN's name: German mechanics ran their pits at Ards in 1936 and at Donington in 1937, and British drivers raced them. The history tells what the war did to the works team after the Mille Miglia of 1940, and its drivers are on The People Behind the BMW 328.⁠source 3​source 14​source 8​source 6​source 11

From 1937 customers raced 328s of their own. In Britain the Light Car Club's three-hour race for catalogue sports cars at Brooklands, on 16 July 1938, was won by Willing and Jarvis's Delahaye; Aldington finished on the same lap, 34 seconds behind after three hours, and Fane, in what Motor Sport called "his personal car", Hugh Hunter and David Murray were 3rd, 4th and 5th in their 328s.

Piet Nortier won the two-litre race at Zandvoort on 3 June 1939, with L. F. Breeman 2nd and Jonkheer de Pesters 3rd, all three in 328s. At Bucharest a driver racingsportscars lists as Nicoulescou was 2nd in 1937, and Peter Cristea won there in 1938; the next May Cristea won the two-litre race at the Eifelrennen, with the NSKK's Briem 3rd. Hans Gübelin was 2nd at Chimay in 1938.⁠source 24​source 3

Of the races in the table below, the 328s lost their class in two. At Le Mans in 1937, with all three out, the two-litre class went to Orssich and Sauerwein's Adler Super Trumpf Rennlimousine, 6th overall, ahead of three Peugeot 302 Darl'mats. At the Tourist Trophy at Donington on 3 September 1938, won outright by a Delage, Jock Horsfall's Aston Martin Speed Model was 2nd overall and 1st of the two-litre cars; five 328s followed it in the class, Aldington's the best of them in 10th place.

At Antwerp the Dutch driver Hertzberger drove the Aston Martin that Seaman had raced in the Tourist Trophy; once it had broken a piston, Motor Sport wrote, the BMWs "had matters all their own way". The Adlers that met the 328s at Le Mans and Spa were streamlined saloons (sedans) with smaller engines, and Cecil Clutton described the type in 1940.

German racing came back with 328s in its two-litre classes. Racingsportscars lists 19 results for the type in 1946, 50 in 1947, 42 in 1948 and 58 in 1949, most of them from German races at Hockenheim, Karlsruhe-Durlach, Schotten, Hamburg, the Nürburgring and the Grenzlandring. Karl Kling won at Karlsruhe-Durlach on 29 September 1946; in 1947 he won at Hockenheim on 11 May, in the Kamm coupé BMW had built for Brescia, and the Rund um die Bavaria on 8 June. Alex von Falkenhausen won the 1.5-litre classes at Hockenheim and Hamburg in 1947 in a car racingsportscars files as a 328, Paul Greifzu raced his pre-war 328 at Dessau in 1949, and Walter Assenheimer and Walter Schlüter ran 328s into 1950 and 1951.

Some of the cars they raced against were specials with BMW in their names: the entry at Hockenheim in 1947 included a Neumaier Spezial BMW and a Holbein HH47 BMW, and BMW 328 Engine tells of Veritas and AFM. After 1953, when racingsportscars has 42 of them, the results thin out: 24 in 1954, 14 in 1955, and the last in 1961.⁠source 3​source 26

Tony Crook won a two-litre race at Gransden Lodge on 15 June 1946, and the next day Leslie Johnson was 2nd in the Brussels Grand Prix. A 1940 Mille Miglia roadster raced at Croft in 1950 and at Charterhall in 1952. Jacques Swaters and de Tornaco ran a 328 in the Spa 24 Hours of 1949 and retired, and in Switzerland Hans Waeffler and Kaspar Aebli won or were placed in races from 1946 to 1949. Besides the Touring coupé, whose American races are on its own page, a 328 ran in Sports Car Club of America events from 1951 to 1955, at Thompson, Watkins Glen, the Giants' Despair hill climb and Road America.

Frank Pratt won the 1948 Australian Grand Prix in a 328. The Light Car Club of Australia ran it at Point Cook, Victoria, on 26 January 1948, as a Formula Libre handicap, open to any kind of car, over 42 laps of a 3.85 km (2.4-mile) circuit. Pratt took 1 hour 33 minutes 52 seconds and finished 43 seconds ahead of Alf Najar's MG TB Special, with Dick Bland's Ford V8 Special 3rd.⁠source 3​source 2

"Many still take part in historical races to this day," BMW wrote of the surviving 328s in 2011, when its own cars were running in the modern Mille Miglia, a regularity event.⁠source 1