What Do the Letters in BMW Stand For?
BMW stands for Bayerische Motoren Werke, or, translated into English, Bavarian Motor Works. If you’re a little rusty on world geography, Bavaria is a southern state in Germany where BMW originally started making airplane engines around 1917. The current BMW group is composed of BMW, Mini and Rolls-Royce, with its headquarters in Bavaria’s capital, Munich.
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If Bavarian Motor Works is too formal for your taste, the German automaker’s luxury models are colloquially known by the nickname Bimmer, while the company also fancies itself “the ultimate driving machine” — at least according to its long-running advertising campaign in the United States.
From the company’s official bio for its North American arm: “BMW of North America, LLC was established 50 years ago to support the sales, marketing and distribution of BMW automobiles in the U.S. BMW Motorrad was brought into the fold in 1980. In 1993 BMW Group Financial Services NA, LLC was founded, and one year later BMW Manufacturing Co., LLC began assembling vehicles in South Carolina. In 2002 and 2003, BMW Group established MINI USA, and Rolls-Royce Motor Cars NA, LLC relaunching two iconic brands and rounding out its product portfolio.
Today, the BMW Group has a nationwide corporate footprint in the U.S. which consists of nearly 30 locations in 12 different states. Beyond the National Sales Company and Financial Services headquarters in Woodcliff Lake, NJ, its manufacturing plant in Spartanburg, South Carolina, and numerous other operational facilities, BMW Group in the U.S. also includes Designworks, a strategic design consultancy in Santa Monica, CA, BMW Group Technology Office USA, a technology research and development center in Silicon Valley, and BMW i Ventures, a venture capital fund, also in Silicon Valley.
BMW Group Plant Spartanburg is the largest single BMW production facility in the world, and the global center of competence for BMW Sports Activity Vehicles including the X3, X4, X5, X6, X7, and XM. The plant assembles more than 1,500 vehicles each day, and up to 450,000 annually. Since 1994, Plant Spartanburg has assembled nearly 7 million BMW vehicles in the U.S.
The BMW Group sales organization in the U.S. is represented through a network of 350 BMW retailers, 144 BMW motorcycle retailers, 105 MINI passenger car dealers, and 38 Rolls-Royce Motor Car dealers. The company’s activities provide and support over 120,000 jobs across the U.S. and contribute more than 43.3 billion to the U.S. economy annually.”
What Cars Are Currently in the BMW Lineup?
The BMW lineup currently includes:
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