BMW 326

The BMW 326 was a medium-sized sedan that BMW produced between 1936 and 1941, and briefly again under Soviet control after 1945. It was BMW's first four-door sedan and was introduced at the Berlin Motor Show in February 1936, going on sale that May. Fritz Fiedler designed it around a box-section frame, with torsion bar rear suspension and the first hydraulic braking system fitted to a BMW; Peter Szymanowski styled the streamlined body, which was offered as a four-door sedan and as a two- or four-door cabriolet. Its 1,971 cc straight-six, a development of the 319 engine, produced a claimed 50 PS (37 kW) and gave a top speed of 115 km/h. The Eisenach plant built 15,949 before production stopped in 1941, and the design lived on in the BMW 340 and the EMW cars and, through negotiated rights, in the early Bristol cars.