The doors open upward because they had no choice. The 300 SL’s tubular space frame — the structure that gave the car its extraordinary stiffness-to-weight ratio and allowed the lightweight body to be hung around it — ran high along the sills, creating a structural barrier too tall for conventional door openings. Rudolf Uhlenhaut’s engineers solved the access problem by hinging the doors at the roofline. The solution that looked like showmanship was engineering necessity, and the car that looked like an Italian dream was actually a German calculation.

The claim that the BMW 2002 invented the sport sedan is made with enough regularity in automotive writing that it risks losing its meaning. It is nevertheless accurate. Before the 2002, performance cars were sports cars — two seats, impractical luggage space, a driving experience that required commitment and sacrifice. The 2002 demonstrated that a four-seat, practical saloon could be as rewarding to drive as a sports car while remaining useful for the everyday purposes that sports cars excluded. The 3 Series, the M3, and forty years of sport sedan development trace directly to what BMW did with the 02 series body and a 2.0-liter four-cylinder engine in 1966.