BMW E9 3.0 CSL Car Photo Shoot in Sydney
This car photo shoot was taken in the heart of Sydney early one Sunday morning. The car’s owner, David, was after a set of photos to highlight the unique details of his recently restored BMW E9 3.0 CSL as well as having it photographed together with it’s more modern iteration, his E46 CSL.
BMW built just 1,265 E9 3.0 CSL’s worldwide as a homologation special to make the car eligible for racing in the European Touring Car Championship which it dominated and won from 1975 to 1979. At just 1,150kgs with engine choices up to 350kW it proved its superiority across Europe and America. It was also made famous off the track by being one of the first ‘BMW Art Cars’ famously raced at Le Mans and other events.
It’s designer Jochen Neerpasch became famous for other projects such as the M1 supercar, creating the BMW Motorsport division and legendary models such as the M5 and M3. He had great help from Hans-Joachim Stuck, Paul Rosche on board anddrivers such as Derek Bell, Ronnie Peterson and Chris Amon.
Many years later, and making this photo shoot a little more unique, the “step brother” E46 CSL was created. Just 1 of just 27 to make it to Australia and only 1,500 worldwide it was designed to lap the famous Nordschleife in less than 8 minutes with changes made to the stock vehicle to reduce weight, improve aerodyamics and handling. Controversially it was only offered with the SMG II semi-automatic gearbox with no Manual option available, a first for the time.
