BMW has been in business for more than a century, and the company has made more than cars during its long history.
BMW history starts in 1916 with Gustav Otto and Karl Rapp. Otto merged his aircraft manufacturing company into Bayerische Flugzeug-Werke AG (BFW) on March 7, 1916. One year later, in 1917, Rapp’s airplane engine-building company became Bayerische Motoren Werke GmbH (BMW). The company dates its founding back to that 1916 date. The famous blue, white, and black BMW rotating-propeller emblem has graced the company’s products since 1917.
BMW made its first cars in 1928. They were made under license from the U.K.’s Austin, but BMW soon designed its own cars, producing them from 1932. One year later, the National Socialists (also known as the Nazis) converted Germany into a war economy. The majority of BMW’s production capacity would now be aircraft engines.
The post-war years saw car production resume in 1952 with the BMW 501, a six-cylinder luxury sedan that did not succeed in the marketplace.
