Aerodynamics

Samaan Coachworks – E21 Body Kit

As you read the various posts and pages in this website, you will come to understand that one of the prime motivating factors in the creation of Samaan Coachworks is the vast discrepancy between the styling and aerodynamics available to European BMW owners and American BMW owners.

Going back as far as the E21, the European public was blessed with beautifully sleek chrome bumpers and/or bumper replacement skirts. While the chrome bumpers made the BMWs look like classic cars of the past, the bumper replacement skirts made the BMW 3-Series look a decade ahead of its time. It is not until the late 90s that cars in general dropped the clunky bumpers for contoured, aerodynamic, bumper replacement skirts and valances.

Needless to say, as an Architect and Industrial Designer, this was highly irksome to me, especially in the days before eBay and the Internet. Prior to eBay, it was practically impossible to get access to European performance automotive parts as the ones offered by Alpina, Zender, and Hartge. aerodynamic parts could be improved upon.

I actually restored an E21 using Alpina parts I found on eBay.de and had shipped over. While it was rewarding finally being able to do that, something was missing, and as a designer, I still found myself feeling like performance parts and as a designer, I still found myself feeling like performance parts and aerodynamic parts could be improved upon.

This is where Samaan Coachworks was really born: the desire to redesign the aerodynamics of a BMW E21. This is one of the first projects I have engaged in: a bumper-replacement body kit for the E21 for both front and back bumpers. This is also the project that pushed me into producing my own CNC machinery, as the subcontracting of these prototypes proved to be as costly or more than the purchase of a CNC router.