BMW – Company History
Bayerische Motoren Werke AG (BMW) is a luxury automobile manufacturer, founded in 1916 and based near Munich in Germany.
Originally an airplane engine company in the early 1900s, Karl Friedrich Rapp and his Rapp-Motorwerke partnered with business owner Fran-Josef Popp and his financing partner Camillo Castiglioni after the First World War. The new company, Bayerische Flugzeug-Werke (BFW), became BMW in 1917 and relocated their production facility to Oberwiesenfeld airfield, which remains the company’s headquarters today.
The transition from airplane engines began in 1923, when the company started manufacturing motorcycles and then automobiles in 1928. However, due to BMW’s manufacturing of machinery for the German army, their plants were dismantled by the Allied forces after the Second World War. The company was forced to produce kitchen items such as pots, pans and utensils to stay in business, until creating their first luxury automobile in 1951, the BMW 501.
BMW flourished throughout the 1960s and 1970s and expanded their manufacturing operations overseas in addition to entering the competitive racing arena. By 1994, BWM had begun manufacturing in the United States, while also acquiring the British-based Rover Group and the Rolls Royce Group four years later. BMW’s first facility in China opened in 2003.
Today, the BMW brand is synonymous with luxury, with over 129,932 employees and yearly sales over $114 billion.
- Family name: Quandt
- Sector: Automotive & Transportation
- Founded: 1916
- Founder: Karl Friedrich Rapp, Fran-Josef Popp and Camillo Castiglioni
- Country: Germany
- Company headquarters: Munich, Germany
- Managers: Norbert Reithofer – Harald Krüger
- Revenue: US$100.1 billion
- Rankings: 29 [Fortune 500]
- Family ownership: 46.8%
- Employees: 122,244
- Website: www.bmwgroup.com
