The BMW 2800 Spicup: BMW's Forgotten Italian Fever Dream

Ever heard of the BMW 2800 Spicup? No? You're not alone. This weird little oddball from the '60s is BMW's forgotten attempt to crash the Italian sports car party.

Back when Lamborghini and Ferrari were the cool kids everyone wanted to hang with, BMW decided to throw caution to the wind with something completely un-BMW-like. The funny thing? They didn't even build it themselves.

Italian design house Bertone basically showed up one day with this wild creation and said, "Surprise!" The mastermind behind it was Marcello Gandini – yeah, the same guy who designed some seriously legendary Lamborghinis.

The Spicup (awkwardly mashing together "Spider" and "Coupe") borrowed a 2.8-liter engine from BMW's parts bin, giving it a respectable 170 horsepower. But it was the styling that really turned heads – and not always in a good way.

When they unveiled it at Geneva in '69, traditional BMW fans nearly had heart attacks. It was just too Italian, too flashy, too... un-German. BMW seemed to agree, quickly selling it off to some lucky buyer who actually drove the thing for 60,000 miles!

The car bounced around for years, suffering the indignity of an orange paint job and some butchered modifications before being restored to its original quirky glory in 2009.

The Spicup is basically that weird chapter in BMW's history they'd probably rather forget – like that time you tried to pull off a mohawk in high school. But honestly? It's all the cooler for being such a misfit.