BMW iX3 reviewed (again)

You’re top brass at BMW, your home town is Munich and this year it is your company’s very great honour to be the official vehicle supplier to the Summer Olympic Games. It is, of course, 1972.

But you have a problem, no different to that seen in previous games, but for the first time, you have a solution. The issue is there have always been complaints from athletes participating in long-distance walking and running events about the fumes belching out the back of the course cars they have to follow. Your answer? Create the first ever electric BMW.

In fact and for reasons we’ll get to, BMW built two, based on the popular 1602 saloon, itself directly descended from the 1961 ‘Neue Klasse’ which single-handedly saved the company. But in place of the 1.6-litre motor usually found under its bonnet BMW installed a dozen lead acid batteries, with a combined weight of 350kg. These now quite hefty cars were renamed ‘1602e’ and with a 43bhp electric motor could propel themselves to 30mph in a dizzying eight seconds flat. Eventually they could reach 62mph but, of course, would never be required to do so. It would have been interesting to time one over 100 metres next to the world’s fastest sprinter of the day; my maths ain’t great but I can’t see any way the BM’s not getting dusted. Anyway the reason they made two was that so limited was their range there was no guarantee one would be able to complete the entire marathon course by itself. Or so the story goes.