Description
In 1958, Elvis Presley took a BMW 507 roadster for a highly-publicized test drive in Frankfurt, Germany, where he was serving as a private with the US Army. The car became Elvis’s daily driver during his time overseas, but its fate after his return to the US remained largely hidden. In 2005, Bimmer magazine editor Jackie Jouret began looking for Elvis Presley’s 507. Digging through myth and misinformation, she found it three years later, located within an hour’s drive of the Bimmer offices in Northern California. The car was in dire need of restoration, but it remained Elvis’s 507, the Holy Grail of collectible BMWs and a car worth millions of dollars even in its decrepit state.This is the story of that car, 507 #70079, from its early days as a BMW demonstration car to its rediscovery and restoration nearly sixty years later. It’s also the story of those who owned and drove it: hillclimb hero Hans Stuck Sr., rock and roll pioneer Elvis Presley, and the car’s American owners from Alabama radio DJ Tommy Charles, to US Air Force pilot Lloyd Cottle, and finally aerospace engineer Jack Castor, who made sure the car ended up in the BMW Museum, where it can be enjoyed by fans of Elvis Presley and the 507 worldwide.
