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The 3.0 CSL Group 4 car and the 3.0 CSL road car may look alike, but they couldn't be more different.
I must have stalled it five times, a combination of unfamiliarity and nerves making my left foot feel particularly useless. This 3.0 CSL had a good reason to make me nervous. One of the real Batmobiles, this is a real Group 4 CSL, and not just any Group 4 CSL. In 1975, this very car won the 12 Hours of Sebring driven by Sam Posey, Brian Redman, Allan Moffat, and Hans Stuck. Quite the lineup.
“The key to success with the CSL is to follow Hans Stuck and do everything he does—or come close to doing everything he does,” Posey told me before I drove the car at Laguna Seca. “It’s a little heavy in the steering and surprisingly fast at the top end. It looks like a box but handles like a prototype. Overall, every aspect of the car is truly magnificent and you’ll have a ball driving it.”
See? Just do what Hans Stuck, the championship-winning driver who was a master of car control, does. Easy. Not intimidating at all.
On first glance, it makes an impression. It’s low and wide, a front air dam running nearly to the pavement and huge fender flares hiding impossibly wide bias-ply slicks. The rear deck is topped by a monster of a wing, one that appears to be equal parts table and aero device. The modifications to turn the CSL into a race car were so extensive, that it’s been said that it cost twice as much to create a racing CSL as it did the M1. Wild. Everything about it is sinister, and that’s before it starts up.
Under the hood is the M49, a race-specific straight-six, and apparently a very valuable one. The manual BMW North America provided before I drove the car was clear that this engine is important. If I heard strange noises, I was to “shut it down IMMEDIATELY” as the M49 is “irreplaceable.” That was followed by this little nugget: “the M49 enters a potentially damaging harmonic between 7200 - 7400 rpm. Constant operation in this range should be avoided.” So, the engine is irreplaceable, please don’t hurt it, but also it wants to rip itself apart. No pressure.
That’s combined with a full syncro gearbox (luxury!), but one with a dogleg first gear and very poorly defined gates (not luxury!). Everyone who has driven the car says they’ve bumped gates or missed shifts, which surely doesn’t help keep the M49 from grenading itself.
And on that first run, the drivetrain was the first thing to bite. I was exceedingly nervous and the clutch was super heavy. Pulling out of the paddock before my first run with a group of Porsche 935s and some 1970s prototypes mixed in, I stalled the car repeatedly. I don’t usually get nervous in a race car, but this one was quite valuable, the first time I sat in it was race weekend, I’m usually in more modern race cars, oh, and the run group I was driving in had pros like Dario Franchitti and Patrick Long along with people you may have heard of such as Bruce Canepa, Adam Carolla, Zak Brown, and Jim Farley. Yes, the CEO of Ford. Again, no pressure.
My first few laps were trepidatious. I know Laguna Seca fairly well, but the car was something else entirely. I let a sea of 935s and prototypes pass as I got up to speed. And that’s when the M49 first invaded my brain, a symphony of manic noise, both induction and exhaust, that runs all the way up to 8500 rpm. That harmonic issue at 7200 rpm that could grenade the engine was never even a thought, it accelerates right through the pain without flinching, like an Olympian.
The steering is unassisted and heavy. I’m overly cautious my first few laps, barely letting the thing dance. It’s on bias ply tires, not radials, so it’s supposed to slide. That’s why famous images of this car show it entering corners with the doors facing the camera. After just a few laps, I’m starting to try what Posey told me to do, imitate Hans Stuck. Steady hands give way to catching slides through all parts of the corner, rumble strips sending it searching for grip, and the 430 hp of the M49 keeping my hands active.
That gearbox, though. There are so many gearboxes that are thrilling to operate. Short throws, well defined gates, that perfect snick snick from gear to gear. They feel mechanical and well engineered, like someone cared. The CSL’s gearbox is deliberately obtuse, seemingly made to frustrate anyone who uses it. There’s always the argument that a gearbox that needs skill to operate correctly is more satisfying. This one crosses the line from needing skill to just being frustrating. It’s fine, if vague, on upshifts, but downshifts were horrendous. First, the pedals were poorly placed for heel-toe, probably a symptom of me being too tall for the car. Second, the gearbox just didn’t communicate. I’d frequently hit gates on downshifts, and even upshifted when I meant to go down once or twice. Every single downshift I hit was a relief.
It didn’t stop me from pushing. It became so easy to drive, just a delightful slide machine that was totally predictable. I started catching and passing many of the cars that I let by earlier in the session, confidence growing as I got closer to the limits. It was easy to see just why this thing was so successful, and why it was best to drive it with a loose setup.
Of course, once I was comfortable was when it all wrong. On the uphill run from Laguna’s tight turn five to the fast turn six, I lost drive, a cacophony of bad mechanical sounds replacing the M49’s song. Like it said in the book, I shut it down and stopped immediately. I also shouted a bunch of obscenities, which weren’t recommended in the car’s instruction manual but made me feel better.
The failure ended up not being catastrophic. A small flange in the drivetrain near the diff sheared, apparently a known weak point that can break due to metal fatigue, and I was just the poor guy driving when it broke. Spares of that part aren’t something kept on hand, though, so it was the end of the race weekend.
It may not have been how Hans Stuck would’ve ended his weekend, but just a taste of how he drove was nothing but a thrill.
It’s obvious they’re related. The angled front headlights, the small kidney grille, the thin pillars, the dainty rear lights, they all carry over. The road car, though, has a higher, narrower stance. A gentler appearance.
The 3.0 CSL is a car steeped in BMW lore. Just 1265 of the lightweight version of the E9-chassis coupe were built. It’s flat out gorgeous, but not in an overt way. It’s a subtle design with a lot of attention paid to minor details that creates a gentlemanly icon.
It takes just about a minute behind the wheel before you feel intensely cool. There’s something special about being in such an unassuming icon, one that blends in to the rest of the world but generates a true reaction among the people who actually know what it is. It doesn’t hurt that even when nobody is pointing at you, the car is just a joy.
The steering is unassisted and the clutch feels vague, so it’s a dance to figure out just how much arm muscle you need to turn the wheel and where that clutch will actually engage. It takes a little getting used to. Once you’re moving, though, it’s wonderful. The interior is simple and elegant. Obviously, there are no screens, no iDrive, and no true tech of any sort since the car is from 1973. What you do have is all you need, gauges, an 8-track player, and oddly uncomfortable-looking but comfortable-feeling seats. The driving position is perfect, and the thin pillars, low sills, and relative lack of crash protection make it one of the easiest cars to see out of.
What it lacks in power and speed-the 3.0 liter M30 straight-six (hence the name) makes 203 hp and 211 lb-ft–it makes up for in gentlemanliness. This thing is every BMW cliche at once. It’s so smooth with that perfect raspy burble out of the exhaust, the straight-six proving why it’s such an excellent layout for an engine. The gearbox is direct but has a longer throw. The steering is lovely and communicative, actually telling you what the front tires are up to and what to expect as it enters a corner. Ride quality, too, is just fantastic. Not overly firm, not too soft, it tells you what the road is doing without punishing you.
The L in CSL stands for leicht, or light. The small group that is now known as M made it happen. The CSL lost things like sound deadening and trim, and is built with thinner glass and steel. This is what allowed BMW to build such an aggressive race car on the platform. It’s a real homologation special, but it’s clear that the CSL was designed as a grand tourer first, racing later.
On a good road, the CSL will remind you of everything that made BMW so revered. It’s not overpowered and there isn’t one real standout party piece from the entire experience. This is an exercise in harmony, in all the pieces of a car working together to give a wonderful experience. It’s not as fast as a modern car and it doesn’t have nearly the level of grip modern suspension and rubber can provide, but it doesn’t matter. It’s an occasion, it makes driving special. If automakers want to make something memorable, they don’t need to focus on specs, they need to focus on making every time behind the wheel special. That’s what the CSL does.