Wait, so if you take a CS, gut all the weight out of it to make it a CSL and then the weight back in, isn't it just a CS again?
Often considered to be the first M-car despite being designed and built before the founding of BMW Motorsport GMBH, the BMW 3.0 CSL was, essentially, the race car version of the CS—itself a sort of two-door grand tourer.
The key to the CSL was the L, which stood for lightweight (actually, it stood for “leicht,” the German word for lightweight, but we aren't keeping score). A number of measures were taken to make the car some 440 pounds lighter than the CS, namely the use of aluminum body panels, plastic windows in place of glass, and a complete lack of any sound deadening.
However, if that seemed too extreme to you, BMW did offer the City Package for the CSL, which used steel panels instead of aluminum, glass windows instead of plastic and plenty of sound deadening. In fact, the City Package even added the carpeting found in the tamer CS.
Of course, as rare as the CSL is today, finding one equipped with the optional City Package is pretty difficult. That didn’t stop one man, however, from tracking one down.
Head over to Classic Motorsports to read about how he was able to find a true needle in the haystack, a City Package-equipped BMW 3.0 CSL.
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Wait, so if you take a CS, gut all the weight out of it to make it a CSL and then the weight back in, isn't it just a CS again?
It was just a way to charge the cusomter for removing weight, and then charging them again to put it back in. Apparently, it didn’t work all that well.
Didn't the CSL using thinner body panels even for the steel cars?
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