With the Speedtop Concept, BMW Opens the Door to One-Off Coachbuilding

The sleek-looking BMW Speedtop Concept introduced at the 2025 Villa d’Este Concours d’Elegance is on its way to production, but don’t expect to see one parked next to a 5 Series at your nearest BMW dealer. Global production will be limited to 70 units, so it’s the kind of car that was designed as an instant classic.

I sat down with Adrian van Hooydonk, the head of design for BMW Group, on the sidelines of Villa d’Este to get a better idea of how a major carmaker like BMW develops and builds a low-volume car. It’s a lot of work, a lot of fun, and it opens the door for more “few-offs”—and even a one-off if someone requests it.

“When I came [to Villa d’Este] for the first time, I was impressed by everything, but I also thought that somehow this must go on. Let’s hope that this continues for many, many years. So then, the idea was born that maybe we should try to contribute something,” he explained. “In 50 years, what cars will be on the lawn here? Perhaps the same ones, another 507, but certainly not the 3 Series. We sell a lot of them. So, those cars will probably not be on the lawn, and we thought that we should create something unique, something that can be produced in small numbers, and that goes into the hands of collectors. Those will probably be the cars that, in 50 years from now, will be here, and that people will be happy to see.”

BMW, which sponsors Villa d’Este, launched the tradition of unveiling a heritage-laced concept car at the annual event. The list includes the M1 Homage (2008), the 328 Homage (2011), and the 2002 Homage (2016). These weren’t envisioned as production models, though BMW later came close to releasing a new M1. In 2022, the 3.0 CSL signaled the brand’s interest in building low-volume models for collectors.

All of these cars relied on key styling cues to bridge the gaps separating the past, the present, and the future, but they weren’t full-on retro like, say, the Volkswagen New Beetle. BMW won’t do retro. “We don’t want to take the company backwards; We want to take the company forward,” van Hooydonk said.

Demand for the 21st-century, M4 CSL-based 3.0 CSL was high enough to convince executives that there’s a case to be made for low-volume cars. They cost a significant amount of money to bring to production, in terms of design and tooling, so they cost a significant amount of money. Each of the 50 3.0 CSLs built reportedly sold for around $800,000. That’s far more than a fully-loaded M4; Hell, it’s a lot more than a new Rolls-Royce Phantom. And yet, the market is clearly there.

Not every concept that BMW shows at Villa d’Este is destined to return to the event in 50 years, however. In 2023, the company unveiled a Z4-based shooting brake called Concept Touring Coupé. The following year, it presented the M8-based Skytop Concept. Neither car will see the light that awaits at the end of a production line. The Speedtop Concept is also M8-based, but it has received the proverbial green light.

Part of the reason why the Speedtop was chosen over the Skytop is that it fills a void in the range.

“We thought, ‘OK, we want to do a closed car.’ We considered a fastback, and they look good, I saw some sketches from the team that looked good, but between the sketches that they presented there was one for this architecture. Immediately it jumped out at us; Everybody wanted to do it. We don’t have it in our line-up currently, and with these proportions we felt it could be a really cool car,” van Hooydonk revealed.

Shooting brake it is, then, and what you see in our pictures is pretty much what BMW will deliver when production starts. “It’s very, very, very close [to the production car]. We have already taken care of the engineering side. We came well prepared,” van Hooydonk clarified. Making it happen was easier said than done. Sure, it’s a limited-edition car, so no one’s going to compare its fuel economy with a rival’s, but aerodynamics still played an important role in the design process. “Efficiency is not in the foreground, but aerodynamic stability is. It’s quite a powerful engine, and we want these cars to handle well,” he added.

BMW is fairly new to building one- and few-off cars, but Rolls-Royce, which it owns, has been doing it for decades. Munich has learned several lessons from Goodwood about building low-volume models.

“We’re doing the BMW slightly differently, but we built on the experience with Rolls-Royce. Things like how much you do in the big factory and how much you do outside, which steps to take in assemblies or small things like that. Of course, we are used to doing one-off show cars; We typically build these in-house, so we know how to put something complicated together,” said van Hooydonk. He noted that the Speedtop will be built largely by hand, and that spare parts will be readily available through BMW Classic.

If you like the idea of a two-door shooting brake but would rather have one that’s based on, say, the M3, you’re not entirely out of luck if you’ve got a fat enough wallet. Like Rolls-Royce and Bugatti, BMW is open to taking requests for one-off cars. “Yeah, we would entertain [a request for a one-off],” van Hooydonk told me. “Maybe we would suggest to the customer that doing 50 or 70 would be an even better idea, and maybe a bit more economical, but so far it hasn’t happened. We’re still just at the beginning.”