If you’re a fan of ‘the most powerful letter in the world’, chances are you had – or still have – a poster of the iconic BMW M1 on your wall. Apart from it being the first of its kind, the first M car and the first and only supercar the Bavarians developed, the M1 is also quite different in design compared to everything else BMW came up with over the years.

You can see it clearly in every crease of the car’s body, in the way the light reflects off it and the way it feels when you’re inside. Driving it, you sit almost sideways as the driver’s seat was installed at an angle due to technical and design reasons. However, apart from the kidney grilles up front and the BMW badges all around, you’d be hard pressed to identify this car as a Bimmer if you knew nothing about the M1.

Today people find it hard to think that you could mistake this beauty with anything else but back when it was launched, a lot of people thought it was a Lamborghini for rather obvious reasons. The car was initially to be developed in collaboration with the Italian company but because of the Lamborghini people backed out of the deal, the last steps of the process had to be completed using German knowledge and some Italian flair courtesy of Italdesign.

That name might not ring a bell but the man behind it was none other than a certain Giugiaro, a legend when it comes to designing iconic models both from Italy and around the rest of the world. In the video below we get to see the legend himself talk about how the M1 came to be and it’s an undoubtedly an interesting take.