BMW — The New Six from Bavarian Motor Works, 1969-1976

BMW’s New Six sedans built the template for every sporty, luxurious BMW that followed — and the pivotal version, the E3 Bavaria, only exists because one persistent American dealer refused to take no for an answer. Read on to find out how a scaled-back interior and a bigger engine created the car most historians credit with starting BMW’s entire American identity.

Every carmaker has an origin story for the version of itself that actually stuck. For BMW in North America, that story doesnt start with a 3 Series or even the E30 — it starts with a car most American enthusiasts have never heard of, built because one persistent dealer refused to take no for an answer. What he asked for became the template for every sporty, luxurious BMW sedan that followed, and its still recognizable in the companys lineup half a century later. The car itself only existed for a handful of years, but the formula it established never really went away.

A Naming System With Its Own Logic

BMWs New Six ran from 1968 to 1977, powered throughout by variants of the inline M30 six-cylinder engine. The companys naming convention baked engine size directly into the model designation: the sedan was coded E3, with an L suffix denoting a long wheelbase, while coupe variants carried a CS designation — adding an I for fuel injection or an L for a lighter, more powerful fuel-injected configuration. Output was originally rated in the German PS standard, phased out in 1992 in favor of the metric kilowatt, a change that still trips up owners reading old factory literature today. The M30 engine itself would go on to power BMW sedans for more than two decades after the New Six was discontinued, a remarkably long production run for a single engine family.

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Two Cars for Europe, One Idea for America

European buyers in 1968 got two versions: the basic, lower-powered 2.5-liter 2500 and the larger 2.8-liter 2800. Both crossed the Atlantic in 1969, with the 2800 wearing the uptown features — full leather upholstery, power windows, a power sunroof — and a price tag to match, positioning it well above most of its American competition in the same size class. Even at that price, American buyers who could find a dealer willing to import one considered it a genuine alternative to established luxury nameplates from Mercedes-Benz and Jaguar.

The Dealer Who Rewrote the Formula

An American BMW dealer convinced the factory to drop the larger 2.8-liter engine into the plainer, lighter 2500 body, betting that North American buyers wanted a genuine hot-rod feel more than they wanted uptown trim. The result, introduced for 1971, was the Bavaria — a car never offered in Europe at all, built specifically to answer one dealers read on the American market, and named, fittingly, after the German region BMW itself calls home. The gamble paid off almost immediately, with American order books filling faster than the factory in Munich could keep pace with.

A Down-Scaled Interior That Reviewers Loved Anyway

The Bavaria replaced both prior models, kept only the larger 2.8-liter engine, and trimmed the options list considerably compared to the uptown 2800. Despite the scaled-back interior and lower price, American automotive press showered it with praise, reaching for words like “superb” and “delightful” to describe its handling and performance — reviews that helped cement BMWs reputation in the U.S. as a builder of genuinely engaging sedans, not just comfortable ones, at a time when that reputation was still very much being built from scratch. Word of mouth from those early reviews did as much to establish BMW in America as any advertising campaign the company ran that decade.

Room for Five, Manners for One

The Bavaria paired excellent fuel economy with strong acceleration, seated five comfortably, and offered a surprising amount of trunk space for a performance-oriented sedan. Most units left the factory with a four-speed manual transmission, fully independent suspension, and four-wheel disc brakes as standard equipment — a spec sheet that, on paper, still holds up as genuinely sporting for the era, especially among full-size sedans that prioritized comfort over cornering. Owners who cross-shopped the Bavaria against contemporary American luxury sedans consistently came away surprised at how much sharper it felt from behind the wheel.

The Car That Started Modern BMW in America

The E3 Bavaria is widely considered the true starting point of BMWs modern lineup in the North American market — the car that established the formula of sporty handling wrapped in genuine luxury that the brand has leaned on ever since. In 1971, BMW also released a dual-carburetor 3.0S with a higher price tag, more power, and notably responsive handling, alongside the longer-wheelbase 3.0L variant, giving American buyers a genuine choice between the Bavarias value proposition and the 3.0S uptown polish. Dealers often kept both on the showroom floor side by side specifically so buyers could feel the difference for themselves before deciding.

Growing the Engine, Rounding Out the Lineup

By 1972, the E3 Bavaria had grown to a 3.0-liter inline six, and together with the 3.0S it rounded out BMWs American sedan lineup through 1974. The 1974 model year brought a styling update tied to new 5-mph impact regulations, with redesigned bumpers to match. Fuel injection arrived for 1975, replacing the twin Zenith two-barrel carburetors that had powered earlier cars and giving the range a genuine performance boost heading into its final years. The switch to injection also improved cold-weather starting, a detail that mattered a great deal to the growing number of New Six owners in colder parts of the country.

The Quiet Handoff to a New Generation

For 1975, the fuel-injected 3.0Si sat at the top of the New Six range with every option BMW offered at the time, while the entry-level E12 530i introduced the platform that would eventually replace the E3 entirely. The lineup held steady through 1976, closing out a run that continued through 1977 — one that had started as one dealers gamble and ended as the foundation of BMWs entire American identity, one that the company has continued building on with every generation of sedan since. Every subsequent 5 Series and 7 Series sedan, in some sense, still owes its basic formula to the gamble one dealer made on a car Europe never even got to buy.

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