The BMW New Six (also known as the BMW E3) is a line of mid-size luxury sedans and grand tourer coupés produced by the German automaker BMW from 1968 to 1977. All models used the then-new M30 straight-6 engine. It marked BMW's return to the full-size luxury sedan market after a hiatus of 5 years and was introduced as a response to growing market segment dominated by Mercedes-Benz. It was important in establishing BMW's reputation as a maker of sporting, luxury sedans. The BMW New Six coupés (better known as the BMW E9) are built on a shortened version of the E3 platform. The E9 coupés share engines, transmissions, suspension and many other features with the E3 sedans. A total of 221,991 sedans and coupés were built. Development After a long hiatus, BMW decided to develop a six-cylinder car in the early 1960s. Work on what was to become the E3 commenced in 1965. The engine was based on the existing fours, sharing their overall layout while not merely an addition of two cylinders. The design team was led by Wilhelm Hofmeister, with some detail work executed by Italy's Bertone and Michelotti studios. A goal was to allow for more passenger space and comfort than the earlier "Neue Klasse" saloons had been able to offer. The new sedan was noticeably a "driver's car", focusing on the front-seat occupants, and the smaller coupé was only barely a full four-seater. A new feature was the twin headlights, set into the grille, a design which was to define BMW styling for decades. Early mockups of the E3 featured broad rectangular single headlamps with rounded corners, but these never went into production - perhaps as a result of the lukewarm reception of the similarly designed 2000 CS. The new car also required a new welding plant at BMW's Munich site. In spite of the car's all-new construction it only cost 70 million D-mark to develop. This was less than half of what one might have expected at the time. Nomenclature Models were given names denoting their engine sizes, and suffixes to indicate the long-wheelbase (L) and fuel injection (i) available on later cars. The coupés were all named CS, followed by i (for fuel injection models) or L (for light-weight models, which also had fuel injection and higher power). 2500/2.5, 2.5CS (2494 cc, ) 2800/2.8, 2800CS (2788 cc, ) 3.0S, 3.0L, 3.0CS (2985 cc,