By: AFP Reporter
Munich, Germany - BMW is planning a lavish 100th birthday party this evening, looking back at its often troubled history and forward as it seeks to adapt to the age of “personal mobility”.
In its home city of Munich the iconic headquarters, a complex dubbed the “BMW four-cylinder”, towers as a source of pride while its vast plant, offices and museum are the southern city's main private employer, with a total of 41 000 staff.
Since its First World War beginnings, the company has grown into a multinational giant with plants in 14 countries, more than 116 000 employees and €80 billion (R1360 billion) in annual sales.
BMW today makes cars and motorcycles and its brands also include Rolls-Royce and Mini.
Leading its rival Daimler-Benz in units sold, and with giant Volkswagen damaged by the emissions scandal, BMW remains in pole position at the top end of the European automotive industry and is seen as a symbol of German engineering prowess.
“It's a great product, it's a joy to make it,” said Stefan Eichborn, wearing a blue overall and speaking with a Bavarian accent, as he supervised huge machines that press steel sheets into car body parts.
The auto giant started life in far more troubled times, on 7 March 1916, making aircraft engines for Germany's Imperial Air Service, such as the 150kW, 19.1-litre, six-cylinder IIIa in the second picture in our gallery.
After the Great War, when defeated Germany was forbidden from manufacturing aircraft, it renamed itself as the Bavarian Motor Works in 1922, adopting a propellor-shaped logo as a salute to its aeronautical origins, in Bavaria's traditional blue and white.
Manfred Grunert, the company's in-house historian pointed out: “The product for which BMW is best known nowadays was actually the last to be taken into its portfolio.”
BMW produced its first motorcycle, the radically advanced R32, seen in our third picture, in 1923, but did not begin making cars until 1928, when it started assembling under licence a version of the Austin Seven badged as the Dixi.
During the 1930s, however, it introduced its own designs, notably the 326 limousine and 328 roadster, such as the 1936 example in our fourth picture.
As the Nazis came to power, BMW again became involved in armament efforts, once more building aircraft engines - among them the superb 801 14-cylinder radial, one of the most efficient engines of its time - even if it did have a reputation for slow-roasting the pilots of the Focke-Wulf 190 fighters it powered!
DARKEST CHAPTER
From 1939 BMW used forced labour from concentration camps - one of BMW's darkest chapters, which it only began to open up about in the 1980s.
At the end of The Second World War, with Germany in ruins, the company survived by making household utensils. It resumed motorcycle production in 1948 and car production in 1952, but its success initially remained limited.
“During the 1950s, BMW had serious financial problems,” Grunert said. “We didn’t benefit from Germany's post-war economic miracle.”
In 1959, the group was about to be taken over by its arch-rival Daimler-Benz, but a group of shareholders rebelled. One of them, Herbert Quandt, son of a well-known industrialist, came to BMW's rescue with an enormous cash injection.
“Without his involvement, BMW would today simply be a division of Daimler,” said Grunert. The Quandt family today remains BMW's biggest shareholders with a stake of 47 percent.
Industry consultant Peter Fuss commented that the presence of a “strong shareholder” willing to take risks was a key factor behind the company's success - but the Quandt name is also associated with the darkest period of Germany's history. Herbert Quandt's father Guenther was one of Germany's leading industrialists during the Third Reich, enjoying the spoils of wealth confiscated from Jews.
NEW CLASS
During the 1960s, BMW launched its “Neue Klasse” limousines and in 1965 coined the advertising slogan “the joy of driving”.
From the 1970s to the 1990s, it expanded abroad. BMW bought British car company Rover in 1994, but it remained a financial millstone and was sold off again in 2000, with BMW retaining only the Mini name, which it re-invented as a premium hatchback.
The Blue Propeller brand has since diversified into four-wheel drives, compact cars and the fully electric i3 and i8 model ranges; the i8 is seen in our lead picture.
As tech giants such as Google and Apple began eyeing the personal mobility market, the company launched its BMWi division in 2011 which also offers services such as car-sharing platform DriveNow.
BMWi product manager Henrik Wenders explained: “The idea now is to instill the spirit of a start-up in BMW, which is not obvious in an industry where product cycles are long,”
So far, BMWi generated only one percent of the group's total turnover, said Wenders, but he declared confidently that “without us there may not be a 200th anniversary” for BMW.
AFP