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Originally Posted by ian beckett
Chassis 23 was the HAT(Hohmann Auto Technik) car which they built over the winter of 1977/8.It was raced by Manfred Winkelhock in the 1978 DRM series backed by Wurth,race number 50.The car was the well known one which was white with red and black panels and stripes.For 1979 the team seemed to lack sponsorship and struggled with reliability problems eventually pulling out of the series.The car was driven at the opening round at Zolder by team boss Hohmann and then by Harald Grohs.The car had by now been updated with different arches and was white and black.The team was disbanded although I think this car was raced once at the opening race in 1980 by Helmut Topfl but was never seen again.Hohmann had by now emigrated to Calgary in Canada and took the car plus loads of spares with him.The car was sold to a small team in Calgary and was raced in club events in the region.It eventually found its way to a well known BMW expert in North America Ray Korman who restored it to look like the Citibank sponsored car which had raced in Imsa.He then sold it to a dealer in New Zealand who had it for sale for some time.The car has recently been acquired by Singapore BMW fan and team boss of the Petronas Z4 car David Wong.He is going to restore the car hopefully in Wurth colours and hopes to have it on display at this Septembers Grand Prix.Amazingly this car has now spent time in four continents,Europe,North America,Australasia and now Asia.I wonder how many other cars have that distinction and such an interesting background? Ian.
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Ian Awesome insight. My race car has a personal connection to this chassis and I still have some parts from it. When Reinhold moved to Calgary with the car and spares, many of the cast off spares ended up on my car as they had become surplused in DRM. This included 2 External Dry sump pumps (both identical, one cast with Alpina in the centre body and the other having the cast lettering ground down and replaced with a stamping of "320i" also some very trick adjustable subframe and semi trailing arms.
It was featured recently in a BMW magazine.