By: Dave Abrahams
Cernobbio, Italy - The golf pros at Pebble Beach can say what they like, but the most prestigious classic car show on Earth is still the Concorso d'Eleganza Villa d'Este, held at the end of May each year on the shores of Lake Como in northern Italy.
It features the world's most glamorous cars from every era, with a special display area for design studies and concepts, some created especially for this event.
And among the show cars at the 2015 Villa d'Este concours, had at the Grand Hotel at the weekend, was this one, the BMW 3.0 CSL Hommage.
The name is French, hence the odd spelling, but it means the same thing as in English - it's a tribute, in this case to an iconic BMW performance car of the 1970s, brought right up to date with state-of-the-art materials and even edgier styling.
The original 3.0 CSL was a pure performance car, in effect a homologation special, built in extremely limited numbers - just enough that it could raced under 'production car' rules. 'CSL' stands for 'Coupé Sport Lightweight' - and this stripped-out special came with an aluminium bonnet, boot and wings, Plexiglas windows and without anything that wasn't dedicated to making it Go Much Faster.
So much so, in fact, that it weighed about 200kg less than the 'standard' 3.0 CS.
Today, of course, the Light Stuff is carbon fibre - with the added bonus that when finished in clear coat rather than painted, its glossy dark weave lends a distinctive exotic look to any component.
THREE-LITRE MUSCLE
But this is not an update of a 1970s car; rather it's designed as if the M skunk works had asked for a CSL version of a current two-door model.
A more upright kidney-grille setup than usual hints at the muscle of the three-litre straight six with eBoost (no power or performance figures mentioned), while a deep carbon-fibre splitter closes the gap between road and car in a modern interpretation of the original CSL's distinctive shark nose.
From the side, the body is divided into three distinct sections, a signature look in an era of fastback coupés, with a continuous horizontal line recalling the all-round chrome trim of the original.
The interior is all exposed carbon fibre - except for a structural, wood-veneered 'instrument panel' featuring only the eBoost gauge. Everything else - speed, revs, gear and shift lights - is on the steering wheel.
The performance focus of the CSL Hommage show car comes out in its bucket seats with contrast stitching, six-point harnesses and red-anodised fire extinguishes and nozzles, as well as the emergency cut-out switches. The only things aft of the seats are two crash helmets, strapped into hollows in the transmission tunnel, emphasising that this is in every minimalist detail a Coupé Sport Lightweight for the 21st century.