If anyone remembers Miller and Norburn from the 1970's and early 80's, here is link to the google street view of their original old building (they moved into a nicer facility prior to going out of business).

 

:thumbsup:

 

Great, talk about nostalgic

 

I want one of those jackets.:M5thumbs:

 

ME too:trophy_bronze:

 

Nice! Thanks for posting.

So whatever happened to that company? Were they strictly an importer of parts or did they provide their own tuning solutions as well? Hardy and Beck were another great 80's tuning company. There is an old article in Bimmer about an e21 that was tuned by them. They seemed like a first rate shop.

 

Miller and Norburn was sort of like "the" BMW tuner from the early 70's up until ~1980 or so here in the US. They made a name for themselves racing a 2002 in the IMSA RS sedan series with Nick Craw driving. They were the Alpina importer for the US for a time until companies further west picked up west coast rights -- like Dietel sometime around 1977-78. M&N split up with each going their separate way sometime around 1979 I believe. I know Preston Miller ran a race shop here in Raleigh around that time as I had some work done there in 1979.

Korman Autoworks sort of picked up where M&N left off and more around that time. Ray had a much more substantial engine building program with a lot of experience in building race and hot street engines, M20s and M30s of course, coupled with a lot of experience setting up suspensions, etc.

M&N (Russ Norburn) moved to a nice new facility just down the street sometime in the early 1980's, and I think it may have been in business there for 10 years or so, but mainly doing service and used sales I think.

 

I know this is an old thread but check out this dietel tuned e21!

BMW : 3-Series:eBay Motors (item 160346856122 end time Jul-12-09 18:59:47 PDT)

 

Thanks for the link. I immediately remembered that mag cover once I saw it in the pictures (for perhaps non-immediately-obvious-reasons :hihi.

I'm a bit mixed on this car for some reason. I would much rather have the Dietel/Alpina 333i that was tested in Nov (I think) 1978 R&T. Something about this car (and definitely the leisure suit interior) just doesn't ring the right bells from this former heavily modified E21 owner. :dunno:

 

Speaking of Miller and Norburn -- their E21 IMSA race car pops out of obscurity after a good while:

https://www.bmwcca.org/classifieds/listings.php?id=8801

 

^Nice find Chuck! I wonder how the old girl drives!

I drooled over the black and white Miller Norburn and Korman Autoworks catalogs when I was a kid!

 

Interestingly, ages ago I bought an E21 track car back in my NCC days that I had seen at Summit Point to use as my daily driver. It wasn't nearly as fast as my modified Bav, but it had a Korman Stage 2+ engine, Schrick cam, 45 DCOE Webers, Stahl headers, etc, etc. It was a beast of an M10 engine in that thing, and man did it surprise a LOT of people back then (mid-80s). A "regular" E21 was dog-slow, but this sucker was putting out ~160hp or so (about 50% more than stock). Fun car. Sold it in 1989 as I had overlooked incipient rust when I bought it.

I need to get those old catalogs scanned...soon! I'll post the pdfs when I do.

 

Speaking of crazy m10s...from the F1 thread in the e60 section:

One reason I want to add a 2002turbo to my garage -- talk about racing lineage! The m10 engine BMW used in the 2002 was the basis for Nelson Piquet F1 championship.

1350HP BMW F1 - M10 Turbo - YouTube

 

Scanned in the 1983 M&N Alpina catalog in this thread.