BMW 332

The BMW 332 was a four-door upper-class saloon that BMW developed in 1939 and 1940 almost to the point of series production, planned to replace the 326 from 1940. It had a modern pontoon body with a fastback tail and a 2.0 litre inline six, a clear break with the tall narrow bonnet, separate wings and running boards of the 326. Because the Second World War had begun, BMW never started production: only three pre-series cars were built, in 1940, differing in small details, and BMW tested them thoroughly on public roads in spite of the war. None of them survives. The 332 was meant to be the starting point of a future model family, much as the 326 had underpinned the 327 and 328, and it would have been a mainstay of BMW car production in the 1940s.