Vertically sliding doors that disappeared into the raised side sills; the design of the Z1 was wonderfully excessive and certainly lived up to the “Z” (standing for Zukunft or “future”) name. Between 1989 and 1991, the Munich factory produced 8,000 examples but few are quite as well preserved and show as little use as the car offered here.

Produced in July 1990 and finished in Toprot over a dark grey and camouflage interior, this Z1 was delivered to official BMW dealership Autosalone La Scala of Florence in August. However, it appears as though the car did not find its first private buyer for quite some time, with the first registration delayed until the end of 1994. The BMW remained in Florence under the care of a second owner, who purchased it in the summer of 2009.

The roadster was added to The Best of M Collection in April 2016, then noted with just 53 kilometres. More than nine years later and following a May 2025 service and brake recommissioning at BMW centre Autoleth A/S of Haderslev in Denmark, the Z1 displayed an astonishing 62 kilometres on its odometer at the time of cataloguing. The car retains its matching-numbers engine and is documented by a BMW Classic Birth Certificate.