You may have heard the quote “everything old is new again” at some point in your life—maybe that quote is old, and now that we’re surfacing it, it’s new again for you. See? Anyway, for a few of the latest car-related examples, just look to the muscle car resurgence of the early aughts with cars like the Dodge Challenger, or the Volkswagen New Beetle in the ’90s. BMW also jumped into the fray back then and resurrected the Mini brand. Now, BMW is making that retro concept new again (making it, uh, new again, again?) with a Concept Touring Coupé show car modeled after two of its more iconic (and rarer) late-model coupes: The Z3 and Z4 Coupes.
The BMW Concept Touring Coupé, which just made its debut at the Concorso d’Eleganza Villa d’Este, should therefore look very familiar. Despite BMW saying that the concept’s inspiration comes from the 1940 328 Touring Coupe and the 02 series from the ’70s, the resemblance to the BMW Z3 Coupe from the late 1990s and its successor, the Z4 Coupe of the early 2000s is unmistakable.
Those two prior Coupes were rare offshoots of the Z3 and Z4 roadsters, and loosely fit the description of a “shooting brake,” or a two-door wagonlet. Both also wore such extreme long-hood, short-greenhouse proportions they were lovingly nicknamed “clownshoes” after their resemblance to funny peoples’ footwear.
As it tends to go with concept cars, BMW hasn’t made any mention of performance numbers for the Touring Coupé. The automaker says that the Touring Coupé has its “hallmark” inline-6 engine under the hood. BMW doesn’t mention forced induction, but we’re going to make an educated guess that the automaker is referring to the same 382-hp 3.0-liter engine found in the current Z4.
We are somewhat surprised that there is no mention of an electrified drivetrain for this concept considering BMW’s shift to increased EV production by 2035. It appears that BMW’s marketing still acknowledges that there are enough holdouts to warrant a concept that still relies 100 percent on fossil fuels.
As pleasing as it is, the Touring Coupé’s silhouette isn’t is only unique exterior feature. The car’s “Sparkling Lario” exterior paint actually has flakes of blue glass mixed in which should set off the grey-brown hues nicely lit from the right angles. BMW has notably gone subtle with its trademark kidney grilles here, which may suggest that the automaker is turning the corner on its overly massive nostril experiment. A set of 20-spoke staggered wheels—20-inch in front and 21 inch in the back—sit at the corners fill out the fender arches. BMW worked with Italian leather workshop Poltrona Frau to adorn the interior panels with cow hide from top to bottom. If that weren’t enough cow hide, BMW tapped Schedoni leather workshop in Modena to create a custom set of matching luggage.
Even though BMW is calling this car a concept, it looks fairly production ready which has us genuinely curious if the automaker is seriously considering bringing back the clownshoe as a Z4 variant—which would create some overlap, of course, with the Z4’s platform-mate, the coupe-only Toyota GR Supra—to the American market in the near future. We’d love to see it.
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