 1977-1983From a 21st-century perspective, BMW's 3 Series is about as slam-dunk-wonderful a car as there is available. The 3 Series enjoys a well-deserved reputation for packing outstanding driving dynamics, excellent quality and undeniable prestige into handsome sheet metal. It's the standard against which all other small sport sedans are, and must be, measured. Even back in the 20th century, when the 3 Series first appeared, it was widely thought of as the cream of the small sport sedan crop. In the mid 1970s, BMW faced the task of replacing its aging 2002 coupe. But the company also knew that the 2002 embodied the company's spirit. As such, the 2002's replacement would need to keep that spirit intact while modernizing in other respects. BMW picked a ripe moment in history to introduce the first 3 Series generation, internally designated E21. The world was just coming off the shock of the oil embargo as the first one rolled off the Milbertshofen assembly line on May 2, 1975, and people who never would have considered a smaller car now found the idea of a fun and frugal machine irresistible. In 1974, BMW sold 184,330 cars, but bolstered by the European introduction of the 3 Series in 1975, worldwide sales reached 221,298. The 3 Series hit North America as a 1977 model, and that pushed BMW production over 290,000 that year and beyond 320,000 in 1978. | 
