BMW 531

The BMW 531, sometimes called the BMW 331, was the prototype of a small car that Fritz Fiedler designed in 1951 and that was meant to become BMW's first car after the Second World War. The two seat saloon took its body from an Austin, as BMW had done in the years after the First World War, with curved fenders carrying integrated headlights and a rounded boot lid that strongly recalled the later BMW 501. A front mounted, fan cooled two cylinder boxer engine of 600 cubic centimetres from BMW's motorcycles drove the rear wheels, and its power is not recorded. Director Hanns Grewenig intervened and series production was dropped, because a small car was thought unworthy of BMW and the large presses needed would have been unaffordable.