Automotive journalist and all-round lovely fella, Jonny Smith, and his YouTube channel, The Late Brake Show, have been traveling around the UK for its barn find episodes. There have been some spectacular cars rescued or resurrected, including BMWs, but this one is particularly heart-wrenching. At least it has a happy ending, so far anyway.It involves a 1977 first-generation BMW 5 Series that was bought at an auction in the early 1980s that the owner's daughter, Sarah, remembers going to. The car has been sitting in the garage of the family farm since the late-1980s, and the owner died in the 1990s. It's been parked for nearly 40 years, and it's not just an early run-of-the-mill early 5er. Here's the story.Check out The Drop at our companion site HotCars for a chance to win the Vyper Elite Trio Package, a premium set of garage chairs! Cars And Memories YouTube/The Late Brake Show Sarah remembers her dad buying the car at an auction when she was a child and riding home with it, then going out on drives with her dad and being assigned the duty of "cop watch." The car is specifically an E12 generation 528 in silver, with an M Sport bumper and graphics. It has some Alpina stickers, but isn't an actual Alpina car. The engine is a 2.8-liter straight six-cylinder, which wasn't a given back then as the 5 Series debuted with a four-cylinder engine.While the 528 isn't the version with fuel injection, the M30 engine was upgraded to a Solex 4A1 DVG four-barrel carburetor, giving it a couple of extra horsepower. The car itself, as pointed out in the video, was as prone to rust as any BMW of the era, and this 528 was stored in a standalone garage with a missing window. As a result, there's not just rust on the shell, but also mildew. However, the important areas of the chassis look like they haven't suffered much.What survived incredibly well was the 1980s Space Hopper rubber ball – a common toy in the UK back then – found among the memories stored with the BMW. The ball held air better than the BMW's tires, but amazingly, three of the four original tires inflated from flat, so the car could be rolled out using the spare after... the brakes were freed up, anyway. Cleaning Up A 49-Year-Old Car YouTube/The Late Brake Show To help with getting the BMW out and running, Smith brought in the perfectly named Tony BMW. Tony has successfully fired up four dormant BMWs for the show already, aided by his bespoke Can Of Hope – a fuel can with a pump welded to it to help resurrect old engines. Effectively, it's a standalone fuel system, but sadly, the 528's engine was seized. It's not necessarily destroyed, but it will likely need a proper tear-down and rebuild before firing up.After a wash, the 528's bodywork looks salvageable then restorable. And, it's a car that should be restored as a piece of history as well as a memory for Sarah. From a historical standpoint, the E12 was part of BMW's transition from its original Neue Klasse (New Class) era into the brand identity we know today.The first 5 Series' development dates back to the 1960s for wind tunnel tests, but its development in the 1970s included BMW's first use of computers. They were used to create the crumple zones, and the E12's roof was designed with rollover protection. The fuel-injected version came later, and though it was developed to meet Sweden's emissions standards, it was successful enough to earn the lower case "i" and become part of BMW's identity in the 1980s.We're glad this old Bimmer was rescued before it was too late.
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