The BMW 3 Series Wagon Exists Because One Employee Went Rogue

The most recent of which details how one of the most significant models – the 3 Series Touring – almost didn’t happen at all, and how the first E30 wagon prototype was built, very unofficially, by a BMW engineer. In his spare time. Without blueprints. In a friend’s garage. What a story, this.

In 1984, BMW prototype engineer Max Reisböck had a problem. He was married with two children, and his second generation E30 3 Series was no longer big enough. Unwilling to shop elsewhere, and with no station wagon alternative available from BMW (the company considered them too utilitarian), Reisböck instead started work on a prototype wagon using a very second-hand E30 323i sedan as the base.

The plan was simple: move the C-pillars back, extend the bodywork, and repaint. Of course, without factory involvement there were no official blueprints to follow. And while pre-cast bodywork was used to fabricate new rear door frames, trial and error was mostly used to fashion a new tailgate – once the rear part of the roof was removed, anyway. The extended bodywork used recycled BMW panels, and the rear side windows were replaced with trimmed Plexiglas alternatives.

Replacing the rear window with certified glass wasn't nearly as simple. Reisböck could not fashion this himself, and BMW obviously didn’t have any in the spare parts cupboard. The answer, somewhat bizarrely and after weeks of searching, was found in the car park of Munich’s Olympic Stadium during a football game. Reisböck noticed that the rear glass on a Volkswagen Passat would fit with only minor fettling. Within six months, and on a strict budget of 30,000 Deutsche marks (around $14,000 today), Reisböck had a rolling prototype ready for its first test drive.

Prior to its maiden road trip, however, Reisböck instead walked his five-door prototype past his superior at BMW. And he was surprised by the reaction.

“In mid-January, I spoke to my supervisor at the time, and told him that I had built myself an estate car,” Reisböck explains in the video on Instagram, shared below. "The next day, in the morning, Mr Von Kuenheim… then spent half an hour looking at the car and all the details, and then left. But before he left the door, he turned around and said, ‘Mr Reisböck, this vehicle is no longer leaving BMW.’”

While that ominous statement could easily have spelled the end of his Touring prototype, Reisböck was astonished to find that, a little over three months later, a production version had already been greenlit. And aside from a longer tailgate, it replicated his design almost perfectly.

Three years later at the 1987 Frankfurt Motor Show, the first 3 Series Touring, and the last new body version of the E30 range, was unveiled. 38 years and six generations later, evolutions of Reisböck’s 1984 secret project are still offered by BMW.