Developed on the basis of the New Class, BMW tried to create a new luxury coupe, in the tradition of the 503, but of course with much more modern technology. It was presented in 1965, for the first time using the new 4 cylinder engine in its ultimate 2 litre form. Interestingly the coupe was introduced about half a year before the 2000 sedan.
Two version were immediately available, the 2000CS with two Solex twin carbs, and the single carb 2000C version as an automatic only, but later on a manual version was also produced.
The body design was rather controversial, in particular the shark teeth around the front were not to everybody’s liking. The glass house however excellent, certainly inspired by the 3200 CS V8. After 4 years of production the car was replaced by the six cylinder 2800 CS, which had a totally revised front part to accommodate the longer engine, but remained much of characteristics of the four cylinder for the rest of the body.
The 2000 Coupes were built by Karmann in Osnabrueck and in total almost 11,000 were produced, with the CS accounting for 80% of the production.
Here are two cars present at the Historic Grand Prix in Zolder in 2004
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