The BMW 3.0 CSL Homage concept has to be BMW’s biggest missed opportunity this year. Every motoring journalist in the land would’ve waxed lyrical about it and about how BMW still has it despite seemingly selling their souls every day they release a new vehicle to fill a gap that doesn’t exist (Not that they are in the business of keeping it real you understand). Instead their homage has inspired criticism for looking like they just took every idea they had for the concept and put them all together without any regard to whether they worked together.

I like a good homage car. One of the best I can recall from recent history is the new Lancia Stratos. That’s a good idea, brilliantly executed. So brilliantly executed than the only reason they didn’t made 50 of them was that the CEO of Ferrari didn’t want anyone making more money than him on modified (and extremely good-looking) 430’s. But it managed to take the Stratos design and bring it into a road-legal thing of beauty.

It doesn’t even need to leave the digital pages of a rendering to be a faithful homage/concept/proof of design that most people would agree is quite nice-looking. What you see above is David Obendorfer’s 2011 interpretation of what a new Renault 4 would look like. And it’s surprisingly restrained in taste and very nice looking. Stuff that 0.9-liter turbo they have under the hood and you can almost see it parked next to a Fiat 500 TwinAir for a comparison test.

Now as far as I can tell the reason that I like those is that they do not stray too far from the original designs and intended purpose. Just enough to be contemporary and not trying to go twenty minutes into the future. Unfortunately for the 3.0 CSL Hommage they went and decided they didn’t just want to make a tribute to the ultimate E9, but also something that would make people swoon even when they remember it 30 years into the future. That wasn’t the goal of the original CSL, the original looked like it did because it was a homolgation special, everything from the mad bodykit to the huge rear wing were there because they had to be. They served a practical purpose on the race car, perhaps a lesser one on the road-going version.

So instead of a car that looks purposeful and fit to take on the racetracks of the world. You get a car that’s…ugly. I’m sorry I can’t be more verbose in my description on how bad-looking I find this car. It’s just Horribly proportioned, the kidneys in the front are far too big and get even worse when your only point of comparison are the squinty little headlights. Speaking of which, get it? the blue LED’s are supposed to resemble the tape they put on the headlights at the time oh hooray. Then there’s the widebody effect, to my eyes, it looks as if someone clipped a giant version of an Otterbox phone cover to a car.

Then there’s the color, it’s baby sick. What other way you can describe it? I may work on an E46 M3 but here….nah. It’s supposed to be a Homage to the 3.0 CSL! Where’s my art car paintjob? where’s my DTM racing livery? Come to think of it, the one point where I don’t have a problem is the back. I like the styling, it seems to gel a lot better than the rest of the car, even if it looks a bit like an angry face.

So now that I’ve had a bit of a rant about it, you may be wondering what would a 3.0 CSL homage would look like in the world according to Solis. Well, you don’t need to wonder a lot, you only need to take a look at another item from Mr. Obendorfer’s portfolio. His BMW CS concept is a more faithful (and considerably more beautiful) homage. Just add some more grilles to flank the slim kidneys (not like BMW is having a grill aversion at the moment), stick a spoiler, a bodykit and the engine from the M6.

Speaking of which, wouldn’t a racing version of that be the real holder of the E9’s Herritage? Look, it even comes in racing livery for pacing the MotoGP races. The X6 in the background of that picture is perhaps less easy to rationalize.