Meet The Mechanic With A Multi-Million Dollar BMW M1 Collection

The BMW M1 may have been the beginning of Bimmer's respected M Division, but it was a bit of a fail when it was new. These days you can expect to pay around $500,000 for a pristine example, while the Procar racing version is essentially priceless.

So how did Fritz Wagner end up with three?

We first need to understand the racing heritage of the M1. The M1 was BMW's first mid-engined car, and it was built to take on the likes of Ferrari. BMW fans had to wait decades for the second mid-engined model, which turned out to be the i8.

BMW teamed up with Lamborghini, but that relationship didn't pan out as you'd expect. Ironically, Lamborghini would eventually turn to another German manufacturer to keep itself from fading into obscurity.

So, BMW went at it alone. To promote the vehicle, it entered the M1 into the famous but now defunct World Sportscar Championship. It was the whole race on Sunday sell on Monday deal.

To help produce enough homologation cars, BMW started the one-make Procar series, which served as an opening act for F1 races. Many F1 drivers competed in this series, and Fritz Wagner was a mechanic for the Cassani Racing Team.

Wagner's story begins in 1979 with the start of the Procar Series. The series was short-lived and only took place in 1979 and 1980. But that would not be the end of Wagner's story with the M1 Procar.

In 1981 Helmut Marko asked Wagner to build a Procar "Pub Design" to race at Le Mans. It was called the Pub Car because four pubs sponsored the car, and each pub owned a quarter of the vehicle. These days Marko spends his time annoying F1 fans.

Wagner noticed a strange phenomenon taking place during these races. Instead of fixing stuff, the racing teams simply used brand-new parts. So Wagner started buying all the used parts and ended up with a massive hoard of BMW M1 Procar parts. It's like an episode of Hoarders, but for BMW nerds.

Eventually, Wagner realized he had enough parts to assemble full cars. Though it's not that clear from the video, he appears to have at least three full models, all made from original parts. Wagner isn't precious about the cars either. He regularly takes them out for a drive or to a race.

As a bonus, Wagner also owns the only M1 prototype built by Lamborghini. BMW is currently in the process of converting said prototype to run on hydrogen power.

He wants to sell some of the cars to the original racers like Nelson Piquet, but he's more than happy to keep them himself if they don't want them.