BMW 2002 Turbo
Why 5.7: Europe's first turbocharged production car arrived with a KKK turbo, zero boost control beyond the driver's right foot, and a front spoiler that spells 'turbo' backwards so the car behind can read it in their mirror — a joke BMW's marketing department almost immediately regretted after the 1973 oil crisis killed the mood. The light 2002 chassis underneath is still one of the most communicative small coupes of its era, and BMW's club culture keeps a genuine number of these driven rather than shelved.
Layout
Natural habitat
Ride comfort
Market value
Median asking price, good condition · €7k (1973) → €193k (2026), trending up · illustrative data
The long version
BMW built barely 1,672 of these before the oil crisis made a turbocharged 2.0-litre coupe look tone-deaf, and the mirror-writing 'turbo' spoiler graphic that seemed clever at the 1973 Frankfurt show became a minor scandal almost overnight. That short, awkward production run kept it a connoisseur's car for decades — genuinely undervalued against its E30 M3 and 2002 tii stablemates well into the 2000s — which meant the people who bought one mostly bought it to drive, not to flip. Values have caught up hard in the last decade as the air-cooled and analog-BMW markets both discovered it, but the club culture underneath — vintage tours, track days, genuine daily use among the committed — predates the money and hasn't gone anywhere.