This glorious BMW M1 could be yours for the price of a Lamborghini Revuelto

How’s this pristine 1981 BMW M1 to kick-start your Thursday morning? It’s being offered by RM Sotheby’s and is expected to fetch between £340,000 to £430,000. But before we delve into the details, a short history lesson...

Originally conceived to help the Bavarians compete with the mighty Porsche 935 on track, BMW sought a partnership with Lamborghini during the early stages of the M1's development. The collaboration was eventually canned though after just seven prototypes were built. 

BMW took back control of the project, and in total 56 race-trim cars were built alongside a further 400 road cars for homologation purposes. The example you see here might just be one of the neatest that's come up for sale in some time. With a Brillantrot exterior (or shiny red in plain English) coupled with a Schwarz interior (or black in even plainer English). At its core sits a 3.5-litre inline-six producing 273bhp and 243lb ft of torque. 

But the performance, which was plentiful for its day, isn’t the main reason why the M1 is a hero car for so many; it’s the design. Penned by Giorgetto Giugiaro at Italdesign, the sharp silhouette is led by that pair of kidney grilles and those closed-off alloys with lined gaps acting as the wheel’s spokes. BMW could learn a thing or two from, er, itself, where its modern design language is concerned.

So, for the price of a new Lamborghini Revuelto, you could have this M1 instead. Yes, it’s slower, likely less comfortable and almost certainly not as efficient… but it has pop-up headlights. And we're told that’s often the deciding factor in this kind of debate.