BMW 501 and 502

The 501 was the first BMW model to be manufactured and sold after the Second World War, introduced at the first Frankfurt Motor Show in 1951, and the first BMW automobile actually built in Bavaria. It and its derivatives, including the V8 powered BMW 502, the first postwar German car to be made with a V8, were nicknamed Baroque Angels by the German public. The 501 and 502 designations were discontinued in 1958, but variations on the same platform and body continued until 1963. This site gives every generation and every model year its own page, in one generation: the single generation (1952 to 1963).