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Hans Peter Koepchen's BMW tuning company

Started by koepchenfan , Feb 28 2008 11:12

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13 replies to this topic

#1 koepchenfan

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34 posts
Joined: February 08

Posted 28 February 2008 - 11:12

Hello,

Besides racingsportscars.com, touringcarracing.net, http://www.hansstuck.../1969-1979.html, http://de.wikipedia....-Peter_Koepchen, do you know any other details about this BMW tuning company?

I would like to know especially these:

- When this tuning company started ?
- Why is it ended in 1973 ?
- What bmw car was tuned first by Hans Peter Koepchen's company ?
- Is Koepchen tuning made at least one Koepchen 2800 CS or 3.0 CS road car ? (at least minimum two 3.0 CSL were made)
- Is it true that H.P. Koepchen was a touring car driver in the 60's ?
- Why Koepchen sold Schnitzer tuned 2000 CS engines in 1969 ? Why isn't he made his own version ?
- Why no Koepchen 3.0 CSL cars started at the touring car races ?
- What happened with that Koepchen 2800 CS which was entered at a race in 1971, but never shown ?
- Are any of his employees lives today ? I know one of them is still working at Nowack BMW tuning ?

Any other details and answer are welcome.

Thank you!

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#2 Frank de Jong

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1,830 posts
Joined: February 01

Posted 28 February 2008 - 11:41

I don't know much about Koepchen, but he did drive in touring car races; on my site, I have 4 entries for him. Two for the 1965 ETCC season (Snetterton and Zandvoort), one for the 1967 ETCC race at the Nurburgring and one for the 1968 Norisring.
The 1973 end must have everything to do with the oil crisis - many German tuning firms folded at the time.

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#3 rhegra

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89 posts
Joined: August 06

Posted 28 February 2008 - 14:59

There is an interesting story about Koepchen in Rainer Braun´s book "Hallo Fahrerlager". Some great touringcar-drivers like Hans-Joachim Stuck, Hans Heyer and Helmut Kelleners startet their career with Koepchen. In the 70ies his company went bancrupt and he had real big problems with alcohol. Hans Heyer looking for him found him some days living like a clochard under a bridge in Düsseldorf. Some of his old friends working at Toyota helped him and gave him a job but he struggled again and again. Some years later he died very poor. I have to take a look at the book this evening...

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#4 rx-guru

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255 posts
Joined: September 06

Posted 28 February 2008 - 15:51

AFAIK Walter (?) Nowack used to work for/with Koepchen (often falsely written Koeppchen or Köppchen) and was later part of EPN Tuning (EPN = Elisabeth Prüser Nowack?) in Mönchengladbach. In those early 1980s he did the engines for the late Dutch Rallycross champion Piet Dam. I understood that Nowack later used to work for/with Kelleners and someone told me that he died some time ago. AFAIK Walter Prüser used to work for BMW dealership Hammer in MG and is still racing nowadays as well as his son (Walter Prüser jun.?). I think he and Hans Heyer know much about Koepchen.

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#5 Tweddell

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114 posts
Joined: December 02

Posted 28 February 2008 - 19:09

hans peter koepchen startet his racing with the BMW 1800 and 2000. he was always racing his own prepared cars, sharing the seat with other well known touring car drivers. His early cars were white painted, were nearly as fast as the bmw works cars , which were silver coloured in this mid sixties period. In 1968 the works cars changed to white paint, koepchen than raced a silver 2002 ti, but when stuck joined his team, his cars were white again.hans peter koepchen also raced martini bmw, bmw 700 as well as the chevron bmw of nicolaus killenberg in one 1000km race . so you can see, he always was involved in bmw-affairs. one of his favourite drivers was clemens schickentanz, i saw very often in his workshop near krefeld.
the end came by financial struggle, as his fanatic racing involvements ruined his financial background. i think all this trouble made him become alcoholic, finally he lived in camping-caravan, were his sad end came soon.

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#6 koepchenfan

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34 posts
Joined: February 08

Posted 01 March 2008 - 11:23

Dear Tweddel, rx-guru, rhegra, Frank,

Thank you for the answers. It sad to read that one of the best BMW tuner of the 60's and 70's died in this way...