995183

“The BMW 1800 TISA VIN 995183 was manufactured on May 26th, 1965 and delivered on June 21st, 1965 to the BMW importer Hoffman Motors Corp. in New York City (this was common, the name of the dealer was not mentioned in the books, only the general importer which was Hoffman Motors at this time). The original colour was Polaris metallic, paint code 060.”

This car was purchased new and raced by Heinz Eckhardt, then owner of German Auto Reparatur in Alameda California from early 1966 through 1969, a German car repair shop and BMW Dealer. Raced mostly in SCCA B-Sedan class and a few hillclimb events, on track at Laguna Seca, Vaca Valley, Cotati, Camp Stoneman, Port of Stockton, Georgetown Hillclimb. It was also a new display car at the November 1965 San Francisco Imported Car Show at Brooks Hall. I am on the hunt for photos of it on display there in San Francisco. It was also used on display during its racing career at other area dealerships and at the 1968 Palo Alto Concours.

First registered and sold for the street in mid ‘69 it originally wore California blue and yellow license plates 375 AMC. We don’t know that first registered owner’s name, but we have records showing that a subsequent owner, Hal Cope of the SCCA owned it as early as 1974 and had Peter Herke perform work to it in preparation for further racing and hillclimbs. As far as we know it was not raced after Heinz sold it. My father, @tisabmw nearly purchased it in 1984, going to see it twice and test driving it with my mom. I even got to ride in the back seat for that test drive, at age 9. At that time Hal had the original racing logbook.

Hal ended up selling to a Dan T... Name to come later... My dad found the car for sale in the Classified Flea Market again. This time in late ‘88 or ‘89 and purchased the car from Dan T. This time sans logbook... To be continued...

A number of years ago I made a post in the Neue Klasse section here, and low and behold, the original owner/driver Heinz Eckhardt replied! It took a number of years, but we connected in person in the spring of 2018….