alloy rims?

[pinkey]

I have a '73 2002 and I was just wondering if there was ever a time when you could have the tii alloy rims when you bought the 2002 from BMW at the time? was it a rare option to get them with the car? or was it only the tii that you could get the very cool looking alloy rims? also on the newer ones that you can buy there is a little logo that says "FPS" was that original or what?

[pinkey]

(nt)

[yeewiz]

I can tell you my '76 2002 parts car had the alloys. I don't know if they were ordered on the original car, but I don't have any separate purchase of them in the owner's records. In any case, the wheels would have been bought from the dealer. Here are pix of the front and back of a wheel. The front have no markings at all. The back has the BMW markings.

[02Les]

(nt)

The 2000 Touring tii appeared in January '71, the sedan 2002tii appeared a little later in April '71. The Touring 2000tii was offered with a "sport paket" which, amongst other things, included the alloy wheels you pictured. These wheels were available as an option for any '02 model and could be ordered as such. They should really be called Touring tii alloys IMHO!!!

[Mike Self]

alloy wheel (known as "soup plate" wheels) were optional on squarelights--and seem to be a lot less common than the roundie alloys. But neither are particularly common.

The early style wheels have been reproduced by MT and were made by the original manufacturer, FPS. These wheels have the FPS logo in a flattened diamond on the outward facing side; the original wheels didn't have this--they were marked on the back side). Also the repro wheels are a lot smoother casting than the early wheels.

Very few US cars came from the factory with these wheels installed. More were put on by the dealer or sold as accessories. From what I've read, sometime in 1974 or 75 there were a bunch of unsold automatics languishing at the importers; they were fitted with soup plate alloys to make 'em a little more attractive and help sell 'em.

Cheers

mike

[MikeD]

Mike...do you happen to have a picture of the "soup plate alloys"? I bought my 74 tii new and it came with the FPS style alloys even thought I found out later that they stopped putting them on tii's in 73. The dealer must have put them on my car before I took delivery.

[John_in_VA]

A wider wheel of the same design was found on 2002 turbos. A search of these terms might turn up more pictures for you.

This pic from Mike Pugh shows early alloys on the left car, late on the right.

[MikeD]

Thanks John...