In the 1950s, car designers on both sides of the Atlantic produced some of the all-time greats of automotive styling, none of them more classically beautiful than the sublime BMW 507. Transatlantic in inspiration - aimed at the United States market, styled by a New York-domiciled German ex-patriot and built in Germany - the 507 reflected North American taste yet was unmistakably European in origin.

The 507 tale began in 1954, when Austrian-born entrepreneur Max Hoffman, at that time the US importer of various European makes, convinced BMW that they should build a sportscar to rival Mercedes-Benz's successful 300SL. Hoffman knew just the man to style the car too: Count Albrecht von Goertz, an independent industrial designer who had worked for the legendary Raymond Loewy on the latter's trend-setting Studebakers. Designer of everything from fountain pens to furniture, Goertz had never before styled an entire car, and post-507 would not work for BMW again until the 1980s, by