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BMW 328 Touring Coupe to Participate in Mille Miglia

Presented at the 2007 Concorso d'Eleganza Villa d'Este, in the foreground the BMW 328 Mille Miglia Touring Coupé and in the background the 2006 BMW Concept Coupé Mille MigliaBMW and the Mille Miglia are united by a shared history that goes back a long way. The triumphs of the BMW 328 are as inseparably linked with this 1,000-mile race as the winning appearance of the BMW 507 in the late 1950s.

BMW Classic is writing a further chapter of this historic narrative at the 2009 Mille Miglia. An icon of BMW racing history, normally only on view at the BMW Museum, has been rendered raceworthy again for this year’s Mille Miglia: the BMW 328 Mille Miglia Touring Coupé, overall winner of the 1940 event.

“On the one hand we want to express the high regard in which we hold the Mille Miglia,” says Karl Baumer, head of BMW Classic, “and on the other our aim is to show that the BMW Museum is no dead-end street, but that we also put historic vehicles back on the road for special occasions.” Visitors to the Museum need not miss out on the legendary racing coupé: during its absence a faithfully reproduced replica will be standing in for the original.

As well as the Touring Coupé, several BMW 328 production models will be sent out onto the roads between Rome and Brescia, along with a range of BMW 328 Mille Miglia Roadsters and a BMW 328 Berlin-Rome Roadster. The youngest BMW to make the journey from Munich to Italy will be a BMW 507 built in 1957. In all, nine works cars will be lining up at the start of this year’s Mille Miglia, with seven further teams bearing the blue and white logo also expected in Brescia.

The teams:

No. 71 BMW 328 (Prinz Leopold von Bayern / Peter Lovett)
No. 72 BMW 328 (Ulrich Knieps / Dr. Hans Hamer)
No. 73 BMW 328 (Maximilian Schöberl / Jürgen von Kuczkowski)
No. 74 BMW 328 Mille Miglia Coupé ( Andrea Castronovo / Kristian Ghedina)
No. 75 BMW 328 Berlin-Rome Touring Roadster (Ian Robertson / Charles Lord March)
No.76 BMW 328 (Dr. Friedrich Eichiner / Dieter Pfundt)
No. 77 BMW 328 Mille Miglia Roadster (Heinrich Lingner / Karl Baumer)
No. 78 BMW 328 (Michael Schröder / Daniel Kiess)
No. 365 BMW 507 (Reiner Löslein / Marcel Botterweck)

[Source: BMW]