Police in Germany are looking for the owner of a BMW, which sat at the bottom of a river for around 35 years and has enigmatic identification data

The police in Germany report a very curious case of a BMW 5 Series E12 found at the bottom of a river, after being there for over 35 years, but about which they can find no information, because all its identification data is enigmatic and does not lead to no identification.

The BMW was pulled from the bottom of the Isar river a few days ago, in the area between the towns of Laundau an der Isar and Dingolfing, northeast of Munich. According to the first investigations by the police and the specialists who participated in the extraction of the car, the BMW would have been at the bottom of the river for about 35 years, estimated to have arrived there between 1986 and 1989. The car has registration numbers on it, so the first step was to find an owner.

It's just that the police discovered that there was no information in their system about such a registration number ever being officially issued in Germany. They searched for the VIN code and, although it is a valid code stamped on the body, these searches did not yield any results either. Another curiosity is that the 518 model is written on the trunk door of this BMW. In fact, the car is a 520i, much more powerful than the 518 version.

So, the police are in a situation where they can't find out anything about a car that sat at the bottom of a lake for 35 years and was never reported stolen or involved in any crime. As there are no records in the official data registers of its registration number and VIN, the police ended up publishing the images and asking for the public's help, if they know anything about this car, which disappeared several decades ago and has now been found.

But in fact, all indications seem to suggest that the car was specially prepared for the secret services, with information about it deleted from official records and with a more powerful engine than it appeared at first glance. And with how intense the work of these services was in Germany during 1986-1989, it is no wonder that its arrival in the river was never reported. So this BMW has more of a real James Bond-esque history behind it and would probably make a good collector's item after it's washed off all the mud. The police announced that the car is in unexpectedly good condition, the mud protecting it from oxygen and corrosion.