BMW Heritage

7 March 1916 · Munich, Bavaria

A Century
of Driving
Pleasure

Freude am Fahren Sheer Driving Pleasure
BMW 328

1936–1940 2.0 L inline-6 · 80 hp

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Origins

A maker of engines that
became a maker of drivers’ cars.

A maker of aircraft engines that became a maker of drivers’ cars. From a Bavarian workshop in 1916 to the sports sedan, the M badge, and the electric era — a century measured in driving pleasure.

Founded
7 March 1916
Home
Munich, Bavaria
Name
Bayerische Motoren Werke

  1. 1916

    Born in the sky

    Bayerische Flugzeugwerke is founded on 7 March 1916 — BMW’s official birthday. Alongside Karl Rapp’s nearby engine works it builds aircraft engines for a wartime sky, not cars for the road.

  2. 1917

    A new name

    Rapp Motorenwerke is renamed Bayerische Motoren Werke under director Franz Josef Popp, with financier Camillo Castiglioni backing the young firm. The engine — not the automobile — is the founding idea.

  3. 1923

    Onto two wheels

    With aircraft engines banned after the war, BMW turns to motorcycles. The R32, with its boxer twin and shaft drive, sets a two-wheeled template BMW still follows a century later.

  4. 1928

    Into the car business

    BMW buys the Eisenach car works and the licence to build the Dixi — inheriting its first automobile, and with it, a place in the motoring world.

  5. 1959

    The night BMW was nearly sold

    Bleeding money from unsold V8 saloons and the exquisite-but-ruinous 507, BMW is nearly absorbed by Daimler-Benz. Herbert Quandt gambles on independence, deepens his stake, and — with the little 700 and the coming Neue Klasse — saves the company.

  6. 1972

    Motorsport is born

    BMW Motorsport GmbH is founded, and with it the blue-violet-red ///M colours. The division that will build the M1, the M3 and a racing dynasty has arrived.

The Century

A Timeline in Motion

From 1916 to 2026. Scrub the years, pick an era, and the model grid below narrows to match.

The Machines

The Models That Built the Badge

Filter by era from the timeline above, or by discipline here. Select any car for the full story.

17 models

Design DNA

Four cues you can read in the dark.

A BMW is recognisable in silhouette. Trace the signatures that have travelled, almost unbroken, from the Neue Klasse to today.

01 / 04

The Kidney Grille (Niere)

Twin vertical kidneys have fronted almost every BMW since 1933. Slim and elegant for decades, they’ve grown into the brand’s boldest — and most argued-about — signature.

The Signature

The most misremembered logo in motoring.

Almost everyone knows what the BMW roundel “means.” Almost everyone is wrong. Reveal the truth.

The myth

The Spinning Propeller

The story everyone tells: the blue-and-white roundel is a stylised aircraft propeller carving through a blue Bavarian sky — a romantic nod to BMW’s beginnings building engines for aircraft.

Showing the popular myth.

Liveries

Six coats, one silhouette.

From the house blue to the blue-violet-red of Motorsport. Pick a colour and watch it land on the metal.

BMW Blue

The house colour, straight off the roundel.

Culture & Myth

Small stories that became a brand.

A century of engineering leaves a trail of details, arguments and happy accidents. A few worth keeping.

  • Engines first, always

    BMW built aircraft and motorcycle engines before it ever built a car. That engine-out identity is why the straight-six sits at the heart of the brand, and why “Motoren” — engines — is literally in the name.

  • Two languages, one promise

    In Germany BMW has always said “Freude am Fahren.” The English-speaking world got “The Ultimate Driving Machine,” coined by a US agency in 1975 — arguably one of the most effective car slogans ever written.

  • The colours have a story

    The ///M blue-violet-red were meant to bridge BMW’s blue with a planned Texaco sponsorship’s red, the violet blending the two. The sponsorship never fully materialised, but the colours became motorsport shorthand worldwide. // VERIFY Texaco origin (widely repeated, hard to source definitively)

  • The grille that grew

    The twin “kidney” grille debuted as two slim nostrils on the 1933 BMW 303 and has since swelled into one of the most debated design elements in the industry — proof a brand signature can become a genuine cultural argument.