80 Years of BMW

Eight Decades Of Excellence

By Jim McCraw

Photography by Courtesy of BMW AG

This wonderful automotive story started two centuries ago, at the very end of the 19th, if you're a strict historian. We say that because BMW had a number of antecedents, going all the way back to the Wartburg automobile, a French Decauville built under license, that started production at the Eisenach Vehicle Factory in 1899. Wartburg was a diverse company, later building aircooled, watercooled and electric models between 1899 and 1904. By that time, chief engineer Willy Seck took over design responsibility and changed over to a more economical, faster-selling car design, a twin-cylinder Dixi. The Dixi cars grew, changed, adapted, prospered, raced and sold through 1928, long after the merger that created BMW.

Officially, BMW got off the ground in March, 1916, when Gustav Otto, son of Nickolaus Otto, inventor of the four-stroke internal combustion engine, merged his airplane manufacturing company, Bayerische Flugzeugwerke (Bavarian Airplane Company), with Karl Rapp's Rapp Motorenwerke. Otto's airframes, combined with Rapp's engines, were not reliable, so they decided to concentrate on just engines and got a deal to build V12 aircraft engines under license from their cousins at Austro-Daimler, the Austrian division of the company that would later become Daimler-Benz.

On July 21, 1917, the company became Bayerische Motoren Werke, using the blue and white colors of the Bavarian diamond flag in a roundel logo that represented a spinning propeller, and BMW was off on one of the greatest adventures in automotive history.

But, just when things were looking good for the company, Germany lost the war and was prevented by the terms of the Treaty of Versailles from building aircraft or aircraft engines. That could have been the end for BMW right then and there.

But the company switched to some engineering and manufacturing busywork for a couple of years, and in 1922 it branched out into making truck engines for a variety of truck makers and motorcycle engines for a fledgling company called Victoria. Max Friz, the managing partner of the company, decided that BMW should build its own motorcycles, and in a mere five weeks drew up a prototype motorcycle with a double-loop steel tube frame, a horizontally opposed or boxer engine and a driveshaft to the rear wheel. The 500cc R32 of 1923 was the first roadgoing vehicle ever to wear the BMW badge, and that's how we come to date the company's 80th anniversary this year.

The BMW motorcycle was raced all over the world. A factory bike set a motorcycle speed record of 134 mph in 1929 and the absolute world land speed record of 173.7 mph in 1937, a record that stood for an amazing 14 years.

In 1924, BMW was granted permission to return to aircraft engine production and built thousands of them for Dornier and other airframe companies. And in 1928, 75 years ago, BMW acquired the Eisenach company and the right to build the then-current Dixi, which was a licensed copy of the British Austin Seven.

When the Austin license expired in 1931, BMW built its very first all-new car, with the somewhat prophetic name of 3/20, powered by an overhead-cam four and featuring a central spine frame and an independent rear suspension system like that used on the Corvette 30 years later. The following year, the company produced its very first inline sohc six-cylinder engine, another corporate hallmark, for the 303 model. The 303 was the first BMW car ever to wear the twin-kidney grille.

From there, the company and the cars it made grew up and up. By 1936, the company had moved up from tiny Dixi copies with 759cc engines to big, all-steel four-door sedans with 1.9-liter sohc engines and multiple carburetion. The 326 model, sold between 1936 and 1941, was the company's best-selling model to date. But the two most important cars BMW built in 1936 were the two 328 roadster prototypes, one of which won the Nue rburgring race that June.

The 328 was the company first complete sports car, and it featured an overhead-valve, 2-liter hemi-head six-cylinder engine with three top-mounted carburetors, generating 80 bhp at 5000 rpm. The bodywork of the 328 was completely new, with sweeping front fenders, rear-hinged doors, an exposed spare tire, hood straps, leather seats, and fender skirts.

BMW finished out the Thirties with a number of elegant variants of the 326 model, including the lovely 327 coupes, cabriolets and sedans and culminating with the 335 built between 1939 and 1941.

BMW did not get going again after World War Two until 1952 when the elegant, ingenious, but dated 501 sedan debuted. Its successor, the BMW 502 of 1954, chasing the Grosser Mercedes of the day, carried BMW's first-ever V8 engine, a 2.5-liter ohv. The 502, a throwback to prewar limousine design, was sold though 1961, and the design was honed with 3.2, 2600 and 3200 variants through 1963.

One of the two best things from Munich in the Fifties were the 503 sports coupe and cabriolet of 1956, with its 3.2-liter, twin-carburetor V8 engine, four-speed floor-shift transmission and lithe, Italianate styling on a long 111-in. wheelbase. The other was the gorgeous, traffic-stopping, pulse-quickening 507, what some consider to be the most beautiful sports car ever designed. Both cars were the work of the legendary Count Albrecht Goertz, but the 507, on a tidier 98-in. wheelbase, was and is a classic.

And one of the weirdest '50s BMWs was the Isetta, the quirky, kooky, one-front-door bubble car powered by a 250cc BMW motorcycle engine, a car built under license from the Italian Iso company that invented it. The 250- and 297cc Isettas were sold from 1955 through 1962, but were not big cash generators. The BMW 700, a four-seater variant of the Isetta with a 600cc boxer twin motorcycle engine, was built between 1957 and 1959, with one front door and one side-opening door.

However beautiful the 503 and 507 were, they were not the right kind of car, at the right volume, for the time. The company was in serious financial trouble, losing DM 6 million in 1956 alone. It sold only 5,400 motorcycles in 1957. By 1959, there was a formal bid from Mercedes-Benz to buy BMW outright, a move that failed when investor Herbert Quandt increased his investment enough to control the company. The publicity-shy Quandt family still does, 45 years later.

Production shifted to an all-new small car, the rear-engined 700. The 700 coupe and sedan, designed by the Italian great Michelotti, were 697cc bike-engined extensions of the 600 with completely new and extremely basic bodywork. These cars were built in coupe, sedan, long-wheelbase sedan, twin-carb Sport and cabriolet versions through 1964.

We can pin the beginning of the modern era of BMW to the introduction of the 1500 model, acar they called the New Class, in 1962. The 1500 was all-new, unibody construction, front-engined with a 1500cc sohc four, strut front and trailing arm rear suspension, front disc brakes, and a handsome body that once again featured the twin-kidney grille. The 1600 followed in 1964-66, but the bigger 1800, introduced in 1963, was the key to the future, with the TI (Turismo Internationale) version adding a second carburetor and 20 bhp to the base 90 bhp 1.8-liter engine.

The 1800 Sport, making 130 bhp with twin Webers, higher 10.5:1 compression, a 5-speed box and front and rear anti-roll bars, was the lineal predecessor of the M cars we know and love today, the first factory hot rod in the company's history. The 1800 engine got a tuneup, and the car a new body, in 1968, and the series sold 150,000 units in four years.

But the big news in 1968 was the introduction of BMW's 2.5- and later 2.8-liter inline 6-cylinder engines in an entirely new line of larger 2500 and 2800 cars with wheelbases nearly 6 inches longer and bodies nearly 20 inches longer. BMW now had its first modern six since 1941, and two lines of cars to sell.

The legendary 2.0-liter BMW engine didn't come first in the sedan, but rather in the Karmann-built 2000 CS coupe of 1965, the predecessor of the 6 Series. It came in 100 and 120 bhp versions. The sedan version was built between 1966 and 1972, with twin-carb TI versions adding 20 bhp.

But the big news came with the 1969 model and the first use of Kugelfisher mechanical fuel injection on the very first tii version, rated at 130 bhp. The more compact, round-headlamp, round-taillamp body style came in 1966, the 2002 version in 1968, and the highly sought-after 2002 tii in 1971. They built a 2002 Turbo variant, with a bigger fuel tank, more instruments, a special front and rear spoiler set, fender flares, wider wheels, and 170 bhp, but the timing was absolutely wrong in the face of the 1973 oil crisis, and production was stopped after only ten months.

In 1970, an inexplicably important thing happened at BMW when Eberhard von Kuenheim was appointed chairman of the board at BMW. This genius of an executive would lead and guide the company's agenda and its products with a steady hand for the next 29 years, one of the longest runs in the history of the automobile business, and certainly one of the most productive and profitable. In contrast, the company has had three chairmen since his departure in 1999.

In 1972, BMW moved into its famous four-cylinder world headquarters building in Munich, opened a new factory in Dingolfing, established BMW Motorsport, and debuted the 5 Series, named after the 507 and the others in the series in the Fifties, starting with the 520. The next year, 1973, saw the debut of the fabulous 3.0 CSL coupe, which, with its 3-liter, four-valve inline six won six consecutive European championships, and pioneered both BMW disc brakes and the three-stripe BMW Motorsport logo that is still with us today.

By 1975, BMW was ready to move into volume manufacture of a great low-priced rocket called the 3 Series, a car that was simply head and shoulders above everything else out there at the time. The 318, 320, 318i, 320i, 323i and the Baur-built convertible quickly became the fastest-selling BMWs in company history. A year later, the 6 Series, a further development of the 2000 CS and the 3.0 CSL, joined the 3 Series and the 5 Series, with 3.0, 3.3 and 3.5 engines, and the following year, 1977, the 7 Series came to America as BMW's first luxury cars since 1952. Through five generations, including the six-cylinder, the V8s, the V12s and the controversially styled current car, the 7 Series has come to be regarded by many as the finest sedan in the world.

As if that weren't enough to drive men wild, the company introduced the rear-engined M1 coupe in 1978, the first BMW to carry the M designation, designed to race in its own Procar racing series in Europe. It made 277 bhp in street form, 450 bhp in Group 4 trim, and 850 bhp in Group 5 spec with a 3.2-liter turbo engine. BMW hasn't been without an M3 or an M5 ever since, and the M cars, even the strange little coupe made in America from the Z3, are golden in the marketplace. The M3 coupe rates as the most successful touring car racer of all time.

In the last 15 years, the company has absolutely mushroomed in its size, scope and product offerings. The delicious Z1 sliding-door roadster came in 1987, along with the new Munich R&D center and the 5-liter V12 engine. The gorgeous, limited-production 850 coupe was built around the V-12 in 1990. The Spartanburg, SC complex opened in 1993, and BMW bought all of Rover's brands, including Rover, Land Rover, MG and Mini in 1994. The exquisite new 5 Series came in 1995, and the Z3 roadster in 1996, the new M5 in 1998, the X5 SUV and breathtaking $135,000 Z8 roadster in 1999, the new 7 Series in 2001, and the full acquisition of Rolls-Royce in January, 2003. The new Mini was named North American Car of the Year for 2003 as well.

Although the company had been in racing for close to a hundred years with Wartburgs and Dixis and BMW sedans and sports cars, doing particularly well here in IMSA, it didn't get into Formula One until the early 1980s, winning the Formula One World Championship with the Parmalat Brabham BMW and Nelson Piquet in 1983 with a turbo four capable of 1300 bhp. BMW got out after 1987, but got back in again with Williams on 2000 with a podium finish for Ralf Schumacher in their debut race at Adelaide and a Monaco win for Juan Montoya this year. That came on the heels on an outright victory at Le Mans in 1999 with a factory effort and V12 power first 9and last) time out. Not to mention back-to-back victories on BMW bikes in the Paris-Dakar-Cairo rally in 1999 and 2000.

BMW, the one-plant company that almost got swallowed up by Mercedes-Benz in 1959, now has 15 plants in Europe, South America Africa and Asia, design, engineering, technology and production facilities in the US, and six additional assembly plants in Vietnam, Indonesia, Russia, Egypt, Malaysia and the Philippines. BMW passed one million cars produced for the first time ever in 2002 91,090,258), and sold nearly 100,000 of its prestige motorcycles (97,553), also an all-time record. At 80, it's just beginning to flex its muscles.