BMW 3 Series
BMW
MarqueBMW
ProductionJune 1975 – December 1983
Engine1.6–2.0 L BMW M10 / M10 Straight-four engine / I4 / 2.0–2.3 L BMW M20 / M20 Straight-six engine / I6
Units built1,354,958
BMW
The BMW E21 is the first generation of the BMW 3 Series, a range of compact executive cars. The E21 was produced from June 1975 to December 1983 and replaced the BMW 02 Series. The series was exclusively built in a sporty two-door sedan / coupé body-style (except for convertibles made by Baur). Contrary to its predecessor, a 'Touring' body with a sloped rear hatch was no longer offered. Six-cylinder models were made immediately recognizable by quad round headlights, instead of the basic two.
Initial models were produced with carburetted four-cylinder petrol engines of 1.6 L, 1.8 L, and 2.0 L. Fuel-injection was introduced in late 1975 on the 320i – but in 1977, a carburetted inline 6-cylinder engine replaced both the 320 and 320i models, while a detuned version of the four-cylinder injection went on sale in the United States. In 1978, the 3-series received its first fuel-injected six-cylinder in the 323i as a flagship performance model; and in 1981, a bottom end detuned 1.6 L was offered in the 315. The cabriolet body style, manufactured by Baur, was produced from 1978 to 1981, with all available engines. There was no BMW M3 model for the E21 generation, but several limited edition models were produced based on the model with the largest engine, the six-cylinder 323i. The E21 was replaced by the E30 3 Series in 1982.
From the Wikipedia article BMW 3 Series (E21), CC BY-SA.
The BMW 3 Series is one of 299 BMW models in the MotorJury library, the catalogue that sets out to hold every car ever made — production, prototype and concept alike. The record places its introduction in 1975. The photography on this page is hotlinked from Wikimedia Commons under an open licence, with the photographer credited on every frame.
To read the BMW 3 Series properly it helps to place it in its decade. The 1970s were the decade the oil crises rewired the industry — emissions rules, safety bumpers and fuel economy suddenly mattered as much as horsepower, and Japanese manufacturers went global. Any car launched into that world was shaped by it — by what materials, engineering and regulation allowed, and by what buyers of the day demanded. Its direct contemporaries in this catalogue, introduced within three years of it, include the Volkswagen Volkswagen Polo, the Hyundai Hyundai Pony, the Volkswagen Volkswagen Scirocco — the cars a buyer of the period would actually have cross-shopped.
On paper, the BMW 3 Series reads like this: the record lists its engine as 1.6–2.0 L BMW M10 / M10 Straight-four engine / I4 / 2.0–2.3 L BMW M20 / M20 Straight-six engine / I6; kerb weight is recorded at 1020 -; drive goes through 4-speed Manual transmission / manual / 5-speed manual / 3-speed ZF 3HP22 transmission / ZF 3HP Automatic transmission / automatic; the layout is Rear-wheel drive. Every figure above is a manufacturer specification carried by the Wikipedia infobox or the open Wikidata record for this model — nothing on this page is estimated, and where a source is silent the row simply does not appear. Production is recorded at 1,354,958 units, which makes it one of the industry's true mass-production stories.
Within BMW's own catalogue the BMW 3 Series sits alongside the BMW 116, the BMW 269, the BMW 303, the BMW 309. The record names the BMW 02 Series as its predecessor and the BMW 3 Series (E30) as its successor, fixing its place in the model line's chronology. Design is credited to Paul Bracq. Assembly is recorded at West Germany: Munich.
This library is generated, verified and rebuilt from the open record on every deploy. The catalogue skeleton comes from Wikidata, specifications from Wikipedia's infoboxes under CC BY-SA, photography from Wikimedia Commons under each file's own licence, and the ownership data from United States federal safety records. Nothing is written by hand and nothing is invented: every fact on this page traces to a public source, and every page is rebuilt nightly as those sources improve. Errors in the source record will appear here too — and disappear the night the source is corrected.
What this page cannot yet tell you is what the BMW 3 Series costs to live with — that is a different dataset. MotorJury's ownership verdicts are computed from federal complaint and recall records plus EPA economy data, published per model year as the nightly ingest reaches each car. If this model was sold in the United States, its years will surface in the ownership database; browse it live or price any car yourself with the true-cost calculator.
Specifications come from the Wikipedia infobox for this model (CC BY-SA) and the open Wikidata record, and are shown only where a source actually carries them — nothing here is estimated. Figures are manufacturer specifications, not measured results.
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Ownership verdicts are computed from NHTSA complaint and recall records plus EPA economy data, re-priced for your country. Verdicts are published per model year as the data is ingested — browse them live, or open the true-cost calculator to price any year yourself.
Contemporaries from other marques, introduced within three years of this car.