Junkyard Find: 1971 BMW 1602

by Murilee Martin

Published: August 29th, 2014

Flawless examples of the BMW New Class are worth plenty, but ratty project cars are another story; the flow of 1602s and 2002s into self-service wrecking yards continues unabated. So far in this series, we’ve seen this ’73, this ’73, this ’74, and now today’s find, a no-rust California 1602. Now, before you Rust Belt BMW fanatics start emailing me about this car, be aware that I shot these photos last October, which means that this car got crushed, shredded, and melted down at least six months ago.

It’s rough, and there’s probably hidden rust due to leaky weatherstripping and long, rainy California winters, but this car wouldn’t have been a terribly difficult restoration project. However, it would have cost $12,000 to make this into a $7,000 car, hence the junkyard trip.

Here’s a 2000 San Francisco residential parking permit, without which your car will be ticketed, towed, auctioned off, and (probably) crushed in the most ruthless parking environment I’ve ever experienced. This Area S permit worked in parts of the Mission District, Noe Valley, and the Castro, all areas in which my ’65 Impala spent a lot of time.

The interior had been picked over pretty well at the time I photographed this car, and I’ll wager that the instrument cluster didn’t go to The Crusher.

I had one of these cool-looking hazard-light switches in my ’58 Beetle, way back in my earliest junkyard-crawling days.

#1970s #1971 #1971BMW1600 #1971BMW1602 #1971BMW2002 #2002 #BMW #BMW1600 #Bmw1602 #BMW2002 #Junkyard #DownOnTheJunkyard #JunkyardFind

Murilee Martin

Murilee Martin is the pen name of Phil Greden, a writer who has lived in Minnesota, California, Georgia and (now) Colorado. He has toiled at copywriting, technical writing, junkmail writing, fiction writing and now automotive writing. He has owned many terrible vehicles and some good ones. He spends a great deal of time in self-service junkyards. These days, he writes for publications including Autoweek, Autoblog, Hagerty, The Truth About Cars and Capital One.

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Big Al from Oz on Aug 31, 2014

I do think this was the car that put BMW on the map. As great and fun as this car was to drive, there was one car so similar, yet better. The 510 Datsun 1600 a superior car that showed the Japanese can build cheap and fun vehicles, it even developed 96hp out of the L16, a great little engine.

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- Snakebit on Aug 31, 2014
  
  Big Al... You'll be interested to know that BMW, in their sales literature, rated the 1971 BMW 1600 at 96hp (SAE)at 5800rpm with the Solex 38 PDSI, 85hp(DIN) at 5700rpm. As for which is the superior car, They both were pretty good. The 510 was advertised for under $2,000 for the two door, the BMW 1600 in 1970 went for about $2,600 before options like a sliding roof, about what a Mustang coupe six cylinder started at. If you read the previous threads, you learned what the Nissan USA chief had in mind when he put together the specifications for the 1968-1973 510. You should be able to guess that both cars are two of my favorite early '70s models.
  
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- Big Al from Oz on Aug 31, 2014
  
  @snakebit The Dat'o 1600's 96hp was in 69 and $600 might not sound like much now, but it's like comparing a $20k to $40k or even a $40k to a $52k car. As for the Mustang, it's not in the same league as these two. These vehicles had superior suspension and suspension tuning (IRS) in comparison to the trucklike Mustang. The Datsun 1600 was also an excellent Rallying platform. The only way a Mustang could keep one of these is in a straight line, like most Amercian cars of that era.
  
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- Big Al from Oz on Aug 31, 2014
  
  @Big Al from Oz Sorry, $20k to $24k.
  
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- Big Al from Oz on Aug 31, 2014
  
  @Snakebit, I do think the 1600 was the best from Datsun, even better than the Z cars. The original Z car the 240 was really the end of the great Datsun era. Datsun attempted to replicate the 1600 with the Stanza, but failed in a way. BMW was the manufacturer that Datsun used as a benchmark as I can re-collect. I might be wrong there.
  
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- Snakebit on Sep 01, 2014
  
  @Big Al from Oz Let me clear up a few points. When I was comparing the BMW 1600 to the Mustang six cylinder, it was strictly to illustrate to folks of a younger generation that in the late 1960's and early 1970's BMW coupes were much more affordable relative to popular American small coupes, i.e. as cheap as a base Mustang. I was not considering performance or features, just relative pricing. Just as an aside, when you bring up Datsun 1600, would you please differentiate what you really mean. When I see the phrase' Datsun 1600' it could be the 1600 roadster or the Canadian version of the 510. If you meant '510', that alone should cut out confusion, all of them were 1600cc from 1968-1973 when sold in the US. Let me point out that I worked as a teen in a BMW dealer for a summer job in 1967, so I'm up to speed with the 1600, 1800, and 2000CS from that experience. I was probably one of very few teens to drive BMW 1600's that early. Among other cars, I owned a 1600 and a '70s 2002. I've owned two Datsun 510's. FWIW, my avatar is a photo of a'73 510. I'm not an expert, but I'm not new to these cars. The Nissan USA executive, Yutaka Katayama, had not just any BMW in mind when he envisioned a less expensive interpretation to sell, but specifically the BMW 1600(this was about a year before the BMW 2002 came to the US), so you're correct. Finally, we'll have to disagree about the 510 and 240Z. To me, they were both great products, engineered for two different types of customers and for two different budgets($2000 roughly versus $3596 at first- and yes-we've discussed the dealer price gouging when the 240Z first came to dealers).
  
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Msquare on Sep 02, 2014

The low price of the 1971 BMW was a direct result of a very favorable exchange rate up until then. A dollar was worth 4 Deutsche Marks in 1969, about 3.6 in 1971, but declined to 2 by 1978. Compound that with double-digit inflation stateside and once-cheap Beetles became premium small cars. And forget about Rabbits and Sciroccos, not to mention Mercedes. It also meant that affordable 1600 was a $10,000-plus 320i yuppiemobile by the end of the decade. The dollar took a dip against the yen as well, but the decline was slower and really didn't have as much effect until the 1980's.

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