By Adrian & Montague Kobbe
Engines are a central part of motor vehicles, so it’s little wonder that one of the best engine makers all-time, Bayerische Motoren Werke (BMW), is also one of the most highly reputed carmakers in the world. Founded in 1916, BMW initially focused on aircraft engines before producing the first of its famous flat-twin motorcycles in Munich in 1923. In 1928 the company took over the Dixi Company, based in the town of Eisenach in Thuringia, and began the production of its first car, the BMW Dixi, which in reality was an Austin Seven built under license.
BMW’s move into the car manufacturing industry paid its dividends in full in the mid-1930s, when the company developed the bullet-like 328 sports car, a 2-litre beauty with the fashionable long bonnet and small cockpit in the rear which already boasted BMW’s distinctive grille, split vertically down the middle into two slender oval halves. The 328 proved so successful, even winning its class in the 1938 Mille Miglia, that BMW embarked on the production of the more functional 327 model, which adapted the streamlined looks of its forebear to a comfortable 2-door cabrio and which would be made available one year later as a hardtop—the first of a long breed of exceptional coupes built by the Bavarian marque.
In Germany, perhaps more than in many other places, World War II was a cataclysmic watershed that divided not only the country—quite literally split between the allied occupation zones and the Soviet one—but also its history. The fate of BMW could be read, in this respect, as an allegory of what happened on a larger scale to the entire nation. Heavily shelled during the war, the Munich factory, where many of the famous aero aircraft engines were produced on behalf of the Nazi Luftwaffe, was reduced to nothing.
Meanwhile, the Eisenach factory, together with other sites in East Germany, fell under Soviet jurisdiction, effectively breaking up the company—or whatever was left of it—in two. After the war the Eisenach branch of BMW resumed the production of the 327, with as many as 505 units making it out of the factory between 1945 and 1955. These were by far the most beautiful cars ever produced in the German Democratic Republic!
Meanwhile, the reconditioned Munich factory was not granted a license to restart production until 1948, and even then it was only allowed to build motorcycles. Furthermore, in 1947 the patent of the 326, 327 and 328 models was “sold” to Bristol-Frazer Nash (Frazer Nash had enjoyed a fruitful partnership with BMW in the years leading up to WWII). BMW’s farsighted design heavily influenced the creation of the exceptional Bristol 400—a car that, like the BMW 328, has as much grace, made as much of an impact, and partook as much in the spirit of the times as any work of art produced in Germany or the UK in the 1930s or the 1940s.
BMW would only restart producing cars in Munich in 1951, with the introduction of the 501 model which mimicked the pre-war 326 in almost every detail. It wouldn’t take long, however, for BMW to shed its old-fashioned guise and capture in full the essence of the German Wirtschaftswunder of the second half of the 1950s. In 1955 the two-door 503 GT, designed by Count Albrecht von Görtz, placed the company among the most important coupe makers in modern car making. The clean lines of the 503’s ponton coachwork are a tribute to simplicity, yet subtle details such as the understated tailfins and front wings make the model quietly seductive.
The following year BMW introduced the sensational 507, a genuine sports car built to rival the contemporary Mercedes 300SL. Fitted with the same 3.2-liter V8 engine as the 503, but yielding as much as 150bhp, the 507 proved a milestone of car design. Shorter than its parent model, the 507 dazzles with its unapologetically boastful lines, countering the 503’s soothing classicism with aggressive curves along both the front and back fenders, as well as the narrow grille and lateral air intakes which make the front of the car resemble a shark’s nose and gills.
Alas both the 503 and its sibling 507 model proved too expensive, which in turn resulted in extremely low production numbers: only 413 units of the 503 model ever made it out of the factory, while the even more impressive 507 was produced just 254 times before both of them were discontinued in 1959. For all the prestige and backdated accolades these cars warranted BMW, they also constituted a major financial failure, which plunged the company deep into a crisis.
It was immediately evident that the V8 models would not fulfil the expectations, and while the motorcycle division of the company was in good shape, the market in Germany was shrinking, as the population looked towards affordable four-wheelers instead. BMW took a bold initiative, procuring the license from Italian carmaker Iso to produce the quirky, but revolutionary Isetta bubble car. The egg-shaped Isetta was the original city car, a two-seater with a single door which encompassed the whole front of the body, windshield and steering wheel included. A hybrid of sorts between a motorcycle and a car, the Isetta was fitted with panoramic windows all around, a retractable canvas roof, and a 293cc single cylinder air-cooled engine that sat just in front of the right rear wheel. Cute and weird at the same time, the Isetta proved a fabulous success, with BMW selling more than 160,000 units between 1955 and 1964—a remarkable achievement considering the original Iso Isetta only sold about 1,000 units in Italy between 1953 and 1955!
At a selling price of 2,580 German marks (about US $600), the Isetta couldn’t really turn BMW’s fortunes, but at least it bought the company some time. The task at hand in the early 1960s, however, remained unchanged: BMW had to find a way to make significant inroads in the midmarket segment. The answer came in 1961 with the introduction of the popular 4-door 1500, the harbinger of the “New Class” series which incorporated a different look that would shape the identity of the company to this date.
BMW built on the success of its New Class by introducing in 1967 the 02 Series, a range of shorter, two-door models that drew on the company’s proven record of engineering exceptional coupes. The most remarkable of the 02 models was the 2-liter 2002, which sold nearly 400,000 units between 1968 and 1975 and was produced in four different versions, including the turbo edition of 1973—an outright sports car in handling and performance that looked nearly identical to its tamer bourgeois sibling.
The New Class series gave way in 1972 to the 5-series, while the 02 series was phased out in 1975 in a generational change that gave rise to the 3-series. With these two families of cars BMW not only cemented its place among Germany’s top car makers, it also changed the nature of the touring car, setting the yardstick in terms of expectations and performance for a type of car that didn’t really exist before: the sporty family car—a group of practical, understated, convenient 4-seaters, available too in full convertible versions, which could (and still can) go like hell if you gun them.
Through the tail end of the twentieth century BMW continued to enhance its range of coupes, adding high-performance and luxury units to its impressive midmarket segment. One of the company’s most accomplished creations was the M1 supercar, designed by Giorgetto Giugiaro in the familiar angular wedge shape he had previously used for the Lotus Esprit, and hand-built by BMW between 1978 and 1981. The M1’s 3.5-liter turbo engine was later used in another exceptional coupe, the M635 CSi from 1984. More recently, the BMW Z8 from 2000 paid tribute, at least aesthetically, to the matchless 507, profiting from far more affluent times to record twenty times greater sales.
The days of financial instability at BMW are far behind, and recently the company’s output has reached a staggering 2.5 million cars per year. This has enabled it to remain faithful to its core values, producing outstanding coupes and convertibles such as the 2011 640i cabrio, while innovating in cutting edge areas, such as hybrid and electronic power sources. BMW’s impressive range of plug-in electric cars includes the i8 sports car, a futuristic creature that bodes well for environmentally friendly lovers of speed—oh, and it does nothing to hurt BMW’s chances of staking a firm claim on the future of the automotive industry.
