BMW Hurrican – The Unique One-Off
The BMW Hurrican is one of the most unusual and little-known cars connected with BMW. Despite sometimes being described as a BMW concept car, it was actually an independently designed and constructed one-off, created with BMW’s support.
The story began in 1965, when 22-year-old Swiss student Max Seelaus, together with seven fellow students at the Pfälzische Meisterschule für Handwerker in Kaiserslautern, Germany, set out to create their own sports coupé as a diploma project. BMW took an interest in the ambitious project and assisted the students by supplying components.
Construction was a serious undertaking, reportedly consuming around 12,000 working hours. The body was hand-built over a tubular steel structure, with aluminium used for several panels including the doors, wings and bonnet. When the Hurrican was presented for its final examination in 1967, the body was deliberately left unpainted so the quality of the students’ workmanship could be inspected.
Seelaus received his diploma on 28 September 1967, but development of the Hurrican didn’t end there. He continued refining the car for several years, with the intention of potentially producing a small series. Ultimately, those plans never progressed and the Hurrican remained completely unique.
The finished car used a 1,990cc BMW four-cylinder engine, fitted with twin Weber 45 DCOE carburettors and producing approximately 120 PS. Power was transmitted through a five-speed sports gearbox. Contemporary figures quote 0–100 km/h in around 9.5 seconds and a maximum speed approaching 195 km/h (121 mph).
The Hurrican was approximately 4.46 metres long but only 1.25 metres high, giving it the dramatic proportions of an Italian GT. Its aerodynamic body reportedly achieved a drag coefficient of around Cd 0.34, an impressive figure for an independently designed car of the period.
One of the fascinating aspects of the Hurrican was the ingenuity involved in its construction. Seelaus sourced components from a variety of European manufacturers. The windscreen has been associated with the Ferrari 250 LM, while the headlights came from a Volvo Amazon, rear lights from a Fiat 850 Sport Spider, and the radiator from an NSU Ro80. Other components reportedly came from Jaguar and Citroën.
The car also had a turbulent development history. At one point Seelaus rolled the Hurrican, requiring extensive repairs, although the accident apparently demonstrated the strength of its structure. Work continued and the completed car eventually received official Swiss road approval in 1975, a full decade after the project had begun.
Interestingly, the Hurrican’s identification plate names Max Seelaus as the manufacturer, rather than BMW. This is an important distinction: although BMW supported the project and supplied major components, the Hurrican was never an official BMW production model.
The Hurrican appeared publicly during the 1970s, including around the time of the 1977 Geneva Motor Show, before largely disappearing from view. After passing through different ownership, the remarkable one-off eventually resurfaced and was displayed at the prestigious Concorso d’Eleganza Villa d’Este in 2007.
Today the BMW Hurrican remains the only example ever built. With its extremely low profile, fastback body, huge glass area and unusual mixture of German engineering and Italian-inspired styling, it represents a fascinating “what might have been” chapter in BMW history.
It is perhaps best described not as a BMW factory concept, but as a unique coachbuilt BMW-supported sports coupé created by Max Seelaus and his fellow students between 1965 and 1967, and subsequently developed into the road-going Hurrican that survives today.
