With production delays and rule-changes hampering any chance of BMW's M1 competing in the World Manufacturers Championship during 1979, the Munich firm were forced to seriously re-asses their competition aspirations for the year. They introduced their own series, Procar, but although extremely popular, it never satisfied all the teams who wanted to race M1's because of its single-make status. Thus, a handful of high profile non-championship events were contested, normally where organisers had the power to accept irregular entries and homologation wasn't such an issue.

The first came during May 1979 when Marc Surer gave the M1 its debut in a German Group 5 Championship race at the Nurburgring. Up against some mighty turbocharged machines built for sprint rather than endurance racing, Surer qualified the Group 4 M1 in an amazing ninth. After dicing with Toine Hezemans' wild Zakspeed Capri though, Surer fell back at around half distance and went onto retire with a sick engine. An invitational spot on the grid for Manfed Winkelhock's M1 in the Le Mans 24 Hours followed just a few weeks later, this car featuring a hot exhaust and going into an IMSA category dominated by twin turbocharged Porsche 935's. With an $8000 paint job by none other than Andy Warhol, it qualified a very respectable 23rd overall (second in class) and finished a fantastic sixth overall - again, second in class. BMW stalwart Jim Busby was another team owner who had acquired a Group 4 M1 with a view to running it outside of the Procar arena in 1979 and entered his machine in a couple of IMSA events - despite having to run in the GTX category. Facing some stiff opposition from turbocharged entries, the Busby car further enhanced the M1's growing reputation by taking third at the Mid-Ohio 250-mile race in July and a fourth six weeks later at Elkhart Lake's Road America 500. One last event, the Kyalami 1000km which like Le Mans was a non-championship race in 1979, saw no less than five cars taken to South Africa for the traditional end of year contest. All run by teams from that years Procar series, there was an Eggenberger entry for Eddie Keizan and Helmut Kelleners, Gunston tobacco putting up the money for Trevor van Rooyen to share Marc Surer's Heidegger machine. F1 pilots John Watson and Jochen Mass were entered in the crack Project Four Marlboro-backed M1 of Ron Dennis whilst other cars were entered by Helmut Marko (Berger/Hottinger) and Manfred Cassani (Stuck/Winkelhock).