(first posted 2/5/2017) The all-new E12 5 Series took its time coming to the US. It went into production in 1972 for Europe, as the 520 and 520i, replacing the long-in-tooth “Neue Klasse” 1600/1800/2000 four door sedans. In 1973, a 525 six cylinder version appeared there, followed by the 528 in 1975. And that was the year the new mid-size BMW arrived here, as a US-only version with the larger 3.0 L fuel injected six as well as other standard equipment deemed suitable for upscale American buyers. The only thing lacking was a US-appropriate air conditioning system; more on that later.
But it was worth the wait.
Given that the new 5 Series had almost as much interior room as the considerably more expensive Bavaria, the 5 series was seen as something of a bargain at the time, priced at $9,097 ($42,239 adjusted). The handsome, slightly wedgy shape created by designer Paul Bracq had the requisite low beltline, tall greenhouse and excellent visibility. And as anyone who’s been in one in recent years knows, these are surprisingly small and delicate-sized cars compared to today’s Super-Sized 5 Series, or any cars. Ergonomics were a strong suit and seating comfort was rated “superb”, although my memories of sitting in the back seat would rate “cramped”. But then I’m a wee bit tall.
Fit and finish were also rated “excellent”. And the legendary tool kit in the trunk was a nice touch. They would be utterly useless nowadays.
The highly-refined 3.0 L six was a new version, making 176 hp @5500rpm and 185 ft.lbs of torque @4500rpm. BMW used fuel injection, thermal reactors and air injection to meet the emission regs instead of catalysts. The engine was praised for its excellent driveability, not common praise in 1975, especially with domestic cars. It started instantly, idled smoothly, and there was never a stumble or hesitation. It did lack the high rpm sparkle that this engine was noted for some years earlier before it got increasingly strangled, but for the times, it was praiseworthy. Not so its appetite, which was enhanced by the thermal reactors. R&T got 19 mpg in normal driving, which was a lot better than its dismal EPA ratings of 12/15. BMW would switch to catalysts for the 528i, which replaced the 530i in 1979.
The 0-60 run in 10.2 was about right, given its power and weight. And again, not bad for 1975, when the typical American V8 sedan would be quite happy to equal that.
Raw power may not have been its forte, but ride and handling were. R&T praised it as the best riding BMW ever, and the best handling one except possibly for the E9 coupes. As per BMW tradition of the times, handling was neutral, except in brisk, tight turns, when slight but manageable oversteer made itself noticeable.
The new power steering was praised. And the four wheel disc brakes were strong, but caused some locking of the front wheels.
R&T summed it up this way: “The 530i is everything a luxury-sports sedan should be”.
Postscript: That should read: Except the air conditioning system. It was a German Behr system, and not up to US conditions. A well-known legend is that, in an attempt to convince BMW that a better air conditioner was needed, two BMW engineers were treated to a long trip to Texas in the rear seat of a black BMW 530i with the power windows disabled.
If you missed Richard Swartz’ fab COAL of a 1975 530i he bought when he was 15½ years old, here it is. A great story of a kid’s first car. And no, the one above is not his car; it belongs to CC reader Steve Evans.
We didn’t get the 530 Down here.what we got was 518&520s.great and reliable machines.still planty on the road.
Hi payam, just curious – are you writing from Iran?
Hi yoshi.yes.I Live in YAZD in the middle of the country.
Cool – all the way from Iran!
So let me see, it’s 1975 and BMW brings out a car that’s sized just right, has plenty of interior room, an interior with excellent fit and finish, good seats, decent handling and a fuel-injected engine that runs smoothly, never stumbles and meets all emission requirements without a catalytic converter.
The contrast with what the Big Three were putting out is just stunning.
Thermal reactors suck, and the air conditioning doesn’t work.
It’s twice as expensive as a Granada or a Nova. As it sits, it’s a nicely polished jewel for a few rich people.
The German car actually priced for the mainstream American market is the VW Rabbit (about the same as a Ford Granada). Apples to apples.
The Thermal Reactors were shit. Fixed that in ’79 and if you find a 530i these days they are long gone. AC is lame compared to USA but everything else about these cars is in another league. I know because I’ve owned an ’81 528i and 4 E28’s, a tii and an E30.
Well. The big 3 did have AC, cruise control and some noise insulation, even good reliability for the most. These BMWs where not so good in terms of comfort and noise levels, and lacked equipment.
“A long trip to Texas in the rear seat of a black BMW 530i with the power windows disabled.” In the behavioral science world, this is referred to as a “natural consequence,” thought to be one of the better ways of influencing unwanted behavior. Having visited Dallas in August, I would think it likely that this intervention was immediately effective.
I lived in Dallas for a long time, and I could attest the significance of powerful air conditioning system. In the late 1970s and 1980s, our German relatives and friends were marvelled at how fast GM HVAC system could turn the interior temperature from sauna level to arctic level before the passengers had a chance to break out a sweat.
Eventually, I noticed more and more vehicles in Munich have their windows still closed during the hot summer days, meaning the air conditioning was used. Even our public transportation buses and subway/commuter trains have them now.
I heard it was a 735i in Arizona but that’s a distinction without a difference. I can attest to the AC issue being a real problem in the south. My family lived in Houston. My father traded a Cadillac with the vaunted Frigidaire automatic climate control for a 1974 BMW 3.0 (more a reaction to the oil embargo than anything to do with the different vehicle dynamics). What a difference in every way including the AC! Other than the AC I preferred the BMW to the Caddy. Dad’s timing
I always loved the justifications…cramped rear seat, “but I’m just a wee bit tall”, four wheel discs that locked and faded, 16 adjustments for heat/vent and a terrible A/C unit, manually adjustable seats, body rattle at idle, 76db at 70 MPH (’75 Lincoln-68db at 70), reliability “better than average”, standard taxi cab vinyl, no cruise control, power windows or locks.
Look, there’s no question that the 530 was a terrific sports sedan. But, other than the massive price, it was far from a luxury car. I always enjoyed the buff mags, particularly R&T pushing the concept that, because it cost as much as a Caddy or Lincoln ($10,400 for the BMW, a Lincoln $11,000 loaded), it MUST be a luxury car. By 1990 or so, maybe, but 1975? No way! Just call it a great, expensive sports sedan and leave it at that.
Yeah, this is something that just always strikes me as odd as a European. A BMW 3 and 5 series just isn’t a luxury car over here. Sure it can be fast, and loaded with features, but you’d need the 7 series, or larger. They are by no means bad cars, but they’re just simply more ordinary, the Norwegian police even uses BMW 5 series estates for instance.
Au contraire, 1n 1975 they were very much a luxury car, certainly in the country of rain and sandwiches. A very rare sight back in those days, when middle managers drove cheap Rovers and Triumphs and the only way upwards was via Jaguar.
BMWs have become like white goods in the UK nowadays, together with Audi, they are a common sight, whether or not they are owned by the driver…
Yep, give me a Talisman or a Continental Town Car any day.
The Lincoln had in fact 65 db at 70 mph in 1975 (Continental Town Car).
The Europeans never did any major work at NVH.
Austere yes. Depends on how one defines luxury. Climbing out of a BMW after a long highway drive at accelerated speeds in complete control with supportive seats and actual road feel… is a luxury.
Wheelbase 103.8″ Shorter than the modern two-sizes down 2-series.
I’m OK with the idea that these are an expensive sports sedan. But one big flaw of these cars was the thermal reactor bolted to the head in place of the exhaust manifold. The tuning and rich mixture required to meet emissions with the device typically resulted in pretty poor gas mileage. And the excess heat from the thermal reactor wasn’t kind to the cylinder head either. Mid ’70s gas Mercedes also had the same problems.
They should’ve just gone ahead with the catalytic converter.
BMW corrected this with their late ’70s 530i replacement – the 528l.
Happy Motoring, Mark
I was a BMW mechanic years ago. I replaced a whole lotta cracked heads on 530i’s (6 & 7’s too). At that time, the whole emissions control thing was very much a work in process – being sorted out. The reactors were used in conjunction with an air injection pump and EGR. All of this hardware was tossed out on the 528i in favor of a cat and O2 sensor feedback.
The 528i was a really superior model compared to its predecessor. They had 5 speed gearboxes too.
One last thing. If I remember correctly, at the time, the dollar was pretty weak against the Deutsche Mark currency. This made the imports from Germany quite expensive, beyond the already high production costs.
0-60 acceleration in 10.1 seconds. Impressive!
It wasn’t accurate. Car and Driver had the accurate stats. It was much quicker than that, even the 530i which was slower than the 528i that replaced it.
What suprises me is that the 530i accelerates no faster than the 528e R&T tested 7 years later.
Damn I miss mine.
It always strikes me how subtle were the changes in styling from the E12 to the E28. Very evolutionary. Speaks very well of the 1972 original design that its successor still looked desirable, if not super modern anymore, in 1988.
By luck or skill, the Hofmeister style for BMW, going back to the Neue Klasse, is one of the greatest achievements of car design.
Yah at first you had to see the back end to know. Still not sure which one is better-looking. E12 is prettier though and I love the dashboard. Same angle shot on two of my 5’s
I did actually own a BMW 518, 1981 E12. 90 hp, 4 speed manual, 3000 rpms at 100 km/t (60 mph.). Extremely noisy, no power steering and not the best reliability to say the least. I think the model that followed the E12 was better, and then when the next 5-series came they nailed it very well.
Overall the E28 is still my favorite. The E12 however, is prettier. You should see the original clay design and how beautiful THAT was. Also the interior of the E12 is spartan but still prettier than the E28 and anything that followed.
The claim the e12 530i had bad a/c is a myth. Very few people had these cars, only 6 to 7,000 were sold new per year, mostly to doctors. Then you get the story from a whiny guy or two that picked up a used car and the a/c didn’t blow as cold as his wife’s 2 year old Corolla.
Bottom line is that if it didn’t blow cold there was something wrong with it, either it wasn’t gassed right, or someone didn’t use it over the winter and the seals dried out etc. Many of the European car dealers weren’t that good at fixing faults, which is why enthusiasts went to independent shops like Hardy & Beck.
A real auto expert, Rob Siegel, has written on the subject in: Just Needs a Recharge: The Hack Mechanic Guide to Vintage Air Conditioning Every whiny guy should read it.
These were comfortable sports sedans that had reclining seats, something domestic sporty cars did not have, except AMC. The Javelin had reclining buckets.
Fullsize Lincolns, Caddies and Imperials handled like land yachts, and they couldn’t break 9 seconds for 0-60 mph in 1975. Car and Driver tested the 4 speed BMW 530i and got 0-60 mph in 8.7 seconds, they also tested the 4 speed 1977 Pontiac Trans Am 400 and got 9.3 seconds. That’s a better comparison for sports / luxury than some bloated whale car, whose owners don’t want to feel the road under ’em.
Fintail Jim above recounted that his father bought a new one. The a/c was nowhere near as good as their prior Cadillac.
Did you have any experience with European a/c systems from before the 90s? They simply were not designed for the kind of conditions we get here. Even the system in my brand new 1985 VW GTI was nowhere near as good as the one in the 77 Chrysler that I owned before it. Hot days in the VW required you to run the system on recirc all the time in order to get decently cold air. Every American system of that time blew just as cold on normal/fresh as it did on max/recirc.
I bought a used 1985 Jetta GL in 1990. It had 61,000 miles and the A/C didn’t work on the test drive. The dealer fixed the A/C before I took delivery, and it worked flawlessly for the 40,000 miles that I had the car. I didn’t use recirc, and I lived in a hotter place than I do today. It was certainly comparable to the A/C in compact Detroit cars of the ’80s, although it didn’t deliver the walk-in freezer feeling that a showroom fresh Cadillac was capable of. I’ve certainly ridden in plenty of three to eight year old full-sized Oldsmobuicks whose A/Cs had degraded to the point where they were being run on maximum cooling by their owners without anyone getting a chill.
I suppose it is possible that the German Jetta’s A/C was better than a Pennsylvania GTI’s A/C. When I was looking to replace the Jetta, I test drove a GTI 16V and was shocked at the difference in interior quality. Supposedly this was because GM bean counters had been hired by VW. A/C seems like an odd place for GM people to scrimp though.
I know the car Fintail Jim is talking about, it was an e3 BMW Bavaria. This was replaced by the e12 BMW 530i for 1975. I knew someone in the a/c repair business that had a 20+ year old e3 in pretty bad shape, except for the a/c which worked well even on the hot day I tried the car. As someone that works on cars and knows the difference between a tx valve and an orifice tube, as long as these ‘70s, ‘80s BMWs and Mercedes have no leaks, are gassed correctly and you have access to R12, they work fine. Yes, you have to close off the fresh air supply, but moving two sliders is no big deal.
They sold so few of these high end imports back in the day, and the dealers that sold them carried many brands under one roof, with the service dept. lacking specific model knowledge. This is why owners often went to specialist shops.
You have people that generalize that all imports in those days had bad a/c, but you have to talk about the specific model. You can’t compare a Mercedes W123 sedan with the BMW e9 coupe, the coupe had a lot of glass area and was a difficult car to cool. Road & Track tested a BMW 528i in 1979 and said the HVAC system worked well, and that car had pretty much the same hardware as a 1975 530i.
That story about disabling the back windows in the BMW was a myth. The real story from Road & Track was that the engineers drove 500 miles in a black 528i in Texas, while working out the e28 5 series’ a/c. That said, the evap cores of both cars aren’t that different in size. More fact is that Road & Track said with the 1977 BMW 6 series the BMW and Behr engineers partly developed the system in Arizona and Texas.
I know the Mopar cars, how an Aspen or Volare a/c compares with a Rabbit or Golf? I don’t know. Those VWs were much cheaper cars than any contemporary BMW or Mercedes though.
Here in Road & Track’s follow up Feb 1979 report, they say the BMW e12 5 series’ HVAC works well, see paragraph six. All e12s had the same a/c hardware.
This is the rest of the e12 528i report. Under that is the March 1979 Road & Track 530i used car survey of 328 owners. The magazine said it was the most reliable car they had surveyed since 1970. No complaints about the a/c, but there was a major complaint against the a/c in the July 1973 owner survey of the older BMW e3 and e9 sedan and coupes. So not all BMWs are the same. Interesting that the comments above come from people who haven’t owned a six cylinder 5 series from new, or near new. No mention in any of the articles about bad a/c.
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Owner survey
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BMW e3 & e9 July 1973 Survey
R&T 10 Best list 1975
This is the car I would have bought in 1975 when I bought a used 2800 (fancier Bavaria) 4 spd. At the time to me the perfect family car, design, engine, manual trans. But after a couple years of that car, then an M-B 220SE with other expensive problems, it was back to big US rwd V8 cars for family use for the next 30 years. A friend at the time who worked for a Tire Rack-like company talked to BMW owners all over the US. The car was blast to drive but the inline 6 had designed-in cooling issues that required frequent head torquing and gasket issues and frequently overheated and caused head warping, cracking &c. Exactly what mine did, 2 head re-builds in 3 years, even though I knew how to maintain it. Supposedly BMW didn’t acknowledge or address the problem for a long time. These were great driving but highly flawed cars. I didn’t wait around to find out. Not a BMW fan ever since.
I briefly owned an E12 528i, with the 5 speed that replaced the 4 speed for the last few years in the US. I was very ambivalent about the car … some things were very nice, but the good wasn’t great enough to make up for niggling problems that in hindsight should have been expected in a 12 year old German car. At the time we had a toddler and a newborn so roominess, comfort, reliability and safety were more important than performance or handling. In fact safety (active) was the justification for buying it as our existing fleet when kid came along were a Ranger and a Vanagon.
It’s fun to read the old arguments about the position of this BMW here. It’s sad to realize that the excellence of West German cars is just a historical footnote.
An old E12 fan here, so consider my bias.
530’s, especially early ones, had their flaws, weak A/C, cracking heads and running hot among them. They weren’t a luxury car, but they were a premium car. They didn’t have that many options let alone standard features, but what were there were nice, quality, premium. And they were hot rods at the time. 176 German HP? How many domestic V8s had that.
They got better as the line went on, by the time the 528i hit in ’79, A/C was good, not great, would keep you comfortable on the highway in pretty much any temps, but not great in stop and go traffic. And it got faster and better MPG and more reliable. Same body and engine family, but really a huge difference between 530s and 528s.
The biggest problem with the A/C systems in the e12 and e28 was that the two systems were designed in parallel, with a separate blower motor for each system. If you live in the PNW west of the Cascades with its long and wet fall/winter/spring, being able to run the A/C set to warm and recirculate is the only way to keep the interior dehumidified. In these cars that is impossible. You have to run either heat or cold A/C. As a result, the A/C doesn’t get used half the year, and as everyone here should know, periodic operation of the A/C is essential to keep the seals in the system lubricated and thus maintain their sealing, most crucially for the compressor shaft seal. That is just asking for refrigerant leaks. The next generation, the e32, finally got an integrated system.
Car & Driver 530i 4 sp
Quicker & faster than C/D’s 1977 Trans Am 400!