Today in Automotive History: BMW's 507 Debuted in Frankfurt in 1955 — and Nearly Took the Company Down With ItBackfire NewsEve NowellTue, September 22, 2026 at 3:34 PM UTCAdd us on GoogleSeventy-one years ago today, BMW wheeled a roadster onto its stand at the Frankfurt Motor Show that the company could not really afford to build. The BMW 507 made its public debut on September 22, 1955, styled by an American-based designer and aimed at customers who had never once considered a car wearing a blue-and-white propeller badge. It looked like a knockout. It also came close enough to bankrupting BMW that the company's independence hung on the outcome.A New York Importer Ordered the BMW 507. BMW Couldn't Build It for the Price.The 507 exists because Max Hoffman, the importer who talked BMW into building something Americans would actually want, rejected the company's first attempt at a sports car and pushed for something sharper. BMW brought in Albrecht von Goertz, a German-born designer working out of New York, to wrap a body around the existing 502 sedan's platform and its 3.2-liter aluminum V8. What Goertz delivered, a long hood, a short deck, twin hood vents, and a kidney grille that still defines BMW's face seven decades later, read like a design statement. It did not read like something BMW could build at a profit.Under that hood sat a 3,168cc OHV V8 making 150 horsepower through twin Zenith carburetors, good for a claimed 122 mph and a 0-to-62 mph run of 11.1 seconds, quick for 1955, but not what justified the price tag. Hoffman had pitched BMW on a $5,000 car built at roughly 5,000 units a year, cheap enough to compete directly with Mercedes-Benz's 300SL Gullwing, which had beaten the 507 to market by a year. BMW never got close on either number.A 1957 BMW 507 Roadster in its original Feather White. Photo: Damian B Oh / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)The Bill That Nearly Sank BMWHand-formed aluminum bodywork and a company with none of Mercedes' manufacturing scale pushed the 507's price to DM 29,950 in Germany; by the time one reached an American showroom it carried a sticker near $10,500, more than double what Hoffman had promised and equal to roughly $117,000 today. BMW lost money on every car it sold. Against a target of 5,000 units a year, the factory built 252, plus two prototypes, across four model years. By 1959 the losses had piled up to DM 15 million, and BMW was reportedly close enough to insolvency that Daimler-Benz circled it as a takeover target. What actually saved the company wasn't the car everyone remembers. It was industrialist Herbert Quandt, who bought a controlling stake and kept BMW independent, setting up everything the company has built since.Elvis Bought One, Then Painted Over the EvidenceNone of that balance-sheet trouble stopped a 23-year-old Army private stationed in Germany from falling for one. Elvis Presley bought a 507 from a Frankfurt dealer in 1958 during his military service, reportedly after the car had already been fitted with an upgraded engine and gearbox. It arrived in Feather White. It didn't stay that way: fans kept tracking the car down and writing their phone numbers across the paint in lipstick, so Elvis had it resprayed red and swapped the factory V8 for a Chevrolet engine.AdvertisementAdvertisementWhen Elvis shipped home, the car's paper trail went with him, and then it vanished. Military plates that changed every year made the 507 almost untraceable, and for decades nobody could even confirm he'd brought it back to the US. A journalist's research finally cracked the case in 2006, tracing the chassis to a collector who had no idea what was parked in his own garage. BMW Group Classic then spent years rebuilding a car that had lost its engine, its gearbox, and most of its floor to rust, before unveiling the finished restoration, repainted back to its original white, at Pebble Beach in 2016.Elvis Presley's BMW 507, restored by BMW Group Classic. Photo: Steve Jurvetson / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)Why BMW 507 Enthusiasts Still CareThe styling cues Goertz drew for the 507 became BMW's visual language for every roadster that followed, from the Z3 to the Z8. Fewer than half the original 252 cars are known to survive, and the market has priced that scarcity in without mercy: F1 champion John Surtees' 507 sold for roughly $5 million at auction in 2018, and Elvis's own car has since been valued north of $16 million. Fred Astaire, Alain Delon, and Prince Rainier of Monaco all owned one too, which says less about the 507's pace than about what it looked like sitting still.BMW built the 507 to prove it belonged in the same conversation as Mercedes-Benz and Porsche. It very nearly bankrupted the company trying. Seventy-one years later, that's exactly the kind of expensive, half-mad swing enthusiasts never stop bringing up.