Yes, I said there was a BMW pickup truck that was built. As far as we know there was only ever one built, but this little truck was something to behold and a bit of a Frankenstein’s Monster of sorts. BMW has never been a company that embraced the idea of hauling and carrying as a goal for their vehicles, but they apparently decided they needed one such vehicle at just the right time and now this single BMW pickup truck is a bit of legend in the BMW world. What was this truck and how come it never came to be a production model? Let’s find out for ourselves.
The E30 3 Series BMW is known as the perfect driving machine and was the right blend between power and precision in a vehicle that was right for the ride. This sports sedan was the one that put BMW on the radar and eventually was the model that started the M Division of BMW. An M3 powered E30 was sought after on nearly every market and if you happened to have one you could count yourself lucky, especially if you happened to keep this car for a long time.
What BMW did to an E30 in 1986 was turn it into a specific use vehicle just for them. Not only did BMW use an E30 M3, but they used a convertible model for the transformation into a small but powerful pickup truck that was transformed to be able to haul parts back and forth across the BMW campus. If you think about the size of some of our smaller pickups of the 1980s you can easily see how having an E30 pickup could be something that would make a lot of sense and might even fit into the market at the time.
The reason for using the convertible is the fact that the convertible offered the built in bracing that makes it a great choice for this conversion, but more importantly, BMW happened to have this model at their disposal and in perfect condition. These two factors made it an easy choice for them to turn the convertible M3 into a small pickup that could carry whatever was needed around the BMW area and deliver items to their destination. This vehicle was actually used for 26 years and was finally retired in 2012, making it one of the longest running BMW M3 models in the world.
Unfortunately BMW never went as far as to think of this as a great possibility for the production line and this single truck was a sight at the BMW campus for many years as the utility vehicle that never was meant to be but was used for much of the work. This car has the emissions restricted 192 horsepower engine to start with but eventually it was replaced with the S14 four-cylinder that was used in the first M3 models, making it more powerful and even more fun for BMW workers when they had to use it for transporting items to and from the various buildings.
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