Since the beginning of the sixties, Pietro Frua actively worked on the projects for a small German company Glas; in principle, at that time, he was at the top of his career and was considered to be one of the most outstanding car designers in Italy. He created models such as sports coupe Glas 1300GT, Glas 1700GT (1964); middle-class sedan Glas 1700 (1964); sedan Glas 2600 V8 (3000 V8) of 1966, which was often called "Glaserati" for similarity with Frua models designed for Maserati. In 1966, Glas was taken over by BMW concern, and some models that were considered unpromising were taken out of production, except a few models of Pietro Frua – an exception was made for them: they were produced a few years more under the brand name and the logo of BMW. It was BMW/Glas 3000 V8, BMW 2000SA and BMW 1600GT. Along with these models, Frua had several experimental developments on the basis of production models of Glas.
In 1967, at Frankfurt Motor Show, Frua showed BMW/Glas 3000 V8 Fastbackcoupe, designed on the basis of Glas 3000 V8 one-off fastback coupe. This prototype, in contrast to the previous models developed by Glas, already had BMW-style "kidney grille". Later it was demonstrated at the Motor Shows in Paris (1967), Geneva (1968) and Barcelona (1969). It was assumed that this model would be one of the major in a series of sports cars from BMW, but in 1968 they decided to abandon this idea and focused on the development of BMW 3.0CS.
Source: bimmerin.net
Images: www.pietro-frua.de
