Gallery: Classic Beemers at the ‘Ring

We must first issue a word of caution about the following gallery: you may spontaneously erupt into a cacophony of unintentional grunts and your jaws may spasm irretrievably. That's because this gallery contains pictures of some of BMW's finest racing machines.

Munich's brightest sparks lurking deep in the bowels of the M Division decided to polish up their old pensioner racers and send them on a granddad's day out. Only this day out wouldn't be a coach trip to a rainy seaside bookended by soft food and melting ice creams; no sir, this would be a trip around many miles of the Nürburgring for the AvD Oldtimer GP.

Five of them were rolled out for the baying hordes: two BMW M1 Group 4 racers, a BMW 320 Group 5 car, a BMW M3 Group A car (1987) and the 1995 BMW 320i STW, driven by four touring car drivers (Dieter Quester, Prince Leopold of Bavaria, Marc Surer, Marc Hessel) and senior design bod Adrian van Hooydonk.

Why? Because this year marks 40 years since the M Division was brought into existence, established with a brief to build the lightest, fastest racing cars so BMW could entertain some ‘winning' on the racetracks of Germany. A handful of staff - just eight - began work on the company's inaugural project (something called a 3.0-litre CSL). We first showed you these beauts as they were being prepped. Now witness them in action. As you can see today, M's come a long way, baby.