The current Z4 is a decent car that doesn’t get a ton of coverage, but BMW put it back in the news this weekend when it unveiled a coachbuilt coupe derivative at Villa d’Este.
Called the BMW Concept Touring Coupe, the wagon-back two-seater is apparently inspired by a 1940 Mille Miglia race winner, though to us it looks like a less thuggish 2020s take on Z3 M Coupe ‘Clown Shoe’ from the late 1990s.
Either way, since the Z4 is already five years old and the roadster version only sells in small numbers there’s no way BMW is going to tool up for a full production run of coupes. But the good news for marque fans who really have fallen for the concept is that BMW appears to be considering a very small production run, though the likely price to the customer will be anything but small.
“[The concept] is a one-off at the moment…and there’s no concrete plan to put it in production,” Motor1 reports BMW Group Design Director Adrian van Hooydonk telling journalists at the Villa d’Este Concorso d’Eleganza.
Related: BMW Concept Touring Coupe Heralds The Return Of The ‘Clown Shoe’ Shooting Brake
“But, we made the agreement before we set sail for Lake Como that, if there’s enough interest, we will take a look at it. That could be a very low-volume version, like 50 cars or so.”
Van Hooydonk said that BMW had already received serious expressions of interest from several moneyed visitors to the event at Lake Como, so there’s a chance the Z4 wagon might make it to the road after all. And let’s not forget that BMW has done something similar before: last year’s 3.0 CSL anniversary special was essentially a production version of the 3.0 CSL Hommage BMW showed at Villa d’Este in 2015, and production was capped at 50 units.
But if BMW does give the green light to a small run of Z4 coupes it won’t be BMW’s own teams doing the building. The firm’s plants are set up for large scale production and couldn’t deal with a tiny run of 50 cars, meaning the Munich bosses would have to contract external companies to get the job done.
The specialist nature of that work could potentially result in each car costing five times as much as North America’s $52,800 entry-level Z4 sDrive, or four times the $65,300 you’d pay for the most expensive Z4 roadster, the 382 hp (388 PS) M40i. That’s a ton of money for a BMW with no M branding or pedigree, but if it cost $250,000 the Z4 Coupe would still be around a third of the price of the 3.0 CSL.
