My Early Bimmer Years
Long before the sobriquet “Bimmer” came into use, the author was getting to know the men and methods that built the foundations for the BMW brand.
Luck had something to do with it—but not everything. When I was assigned to the U. S. Army’s Signal Corps School at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey in the autumn of 1957 our class was told that the top-ranked student at the end of the five-month radio-repair course would have his pick of the available assignments. Motivated or not, I turned out to be that guy.
The range that I could choose from was the Far East, White Sands, New Mexico or Europe—country unknown. My wife and I had talked this over. She had relatives in Germany so we took a chance on Europe, not knowing where we’d end up. When my orders came though they called on me to report to a Signal Corps unit headquartered in Stuttgart, Germany. After a tedious 11 days on a troop transport from New York to Bremen and a train ride I found myself at a base at Böblingen, on Stuttgart’s south-west periphery.
Stuttgart was a great destination for a car enthusiast. Thanks to my previous work as technical editor of Sports Cars Illustrated I had an entrée at Daimler-Benz. I toured their museum and discussed their racing engines with one of their designers. I also had an in at Porsche, one of whose engineers had worked at the Michigan truck-transmission company my father managed. But I wasn’t destined to stay in Stuttgart. Instead my unit assigned me to a second-echelon repair workshop on the base of an armored battalion on the north side of Munich.
Taken under the wing of Sergeant Bridges, I was assigned a workbench and put to work repairing the broken field radios that defied the best efforts of the lower echelons. My wife and I settled down in two rooms of a family’s flat in the Munich suburb of Schwabing, that great city’s equivalent of Greenwich Village. We bought a factory-fresh Renault Dauphine as transport and prepared to see what Europe had to offer.
Right on our doorstep were two big automotive attractions. One was the Deutsches Museum, one of the world’s great centers of technology, with its exhibits of cars and engines. The other, of course, was BMW. I had no obvious contacts there but one name I knew was that of Alex von Falkenhausen. I wrote to von Falkenhausen and was invited to visit the engineer at his modest Munich home
.Our first discussions were about von Falkenhausen’s AFM cars, built in Munch after the war before his return to BMW—for whom he’d developed motorcycles before and during WW2. Standing for Alexander von Falkenhausen—Munich, AFM was one of the stars of German’s resurgent racing-car industry, building both sports cars and Formula 2 racers that enjoyed success. Von Falkenhausen used BMW 328 sixes, Richard Küchen’s V-8 and his own “AlFa” modification of a 1.1-liter Fiat with a hemi head and triple valves
I photographed many parts that von Falkenhausen still had, including his magnesium wheel with integral brake drum, used by other makers as well, and one of his special Fiat heads. He kindly arranged to have blueprints made of his original chassis drawings of AFM cars and engines. In his garage, scene of AFM manufacturing, the tall, slender gray-haired engineer showed me the Opel-based prototype he had built as a potential AFM production car. His Argentine backers left him high and dry but at least he kept the car. A later interest from Max Hoffman failed to bear fruit.
Thanks to von Falkenhausen I was one of the first to try a 507 equipped with Jaguar-type Dunlop disc brakes at all four wheels. In fact the car was the original 507 prototype, which I hugely enjoyed driving on Bavarian back roads. I also road-tested the 600, less exciting but an interesting effort with its Isetta-style opening front door and a single side door for the rear seat. It buzzed along up to 65 mph with a Porsche-like rumble from its BMW flat twin and nodded its nose sharply under braking. It was the starting point for the very successful 700.
The Stateside introduction of the 507 by Max Hoffman was one of the main BMW events I covered before going into the Army. The press was invited to his Park Avenue showroom to see the car, which Max said would sell for $4,988 complete with radio and leather upholstery. So convinced was Max of the merits of the car and its design that he even invested some of his personal funds in the project.
Although Fred Oppenheimer's Fadex was the authorized American BMW importer at the time, Max Hoffman insinuated himself by saying that he would focus only on imports of the 507 to compete in the burgeoning American sports-car market. He negotiated with BMW to buy 2,000 such cars if they could deliver them at DM12,000, $3,000 at the time. Max even hinted to BMW that numbers as high as 5,000 cars were achievable. These were the pots of gold at the end of the rainbow that encouraged BMW to commit to the 507 project
.The Munich managers really wanted to meet Max’s challenge, but when they realized they could never build the car to Max’s price, the Hoffman plan collapsed. Instead the 507 had a price tag that one American reviewer called "astronomical": $11,500 fully equipped. At less than $5,000 some of the car's faults would have been tolerable: steering wheel too close to the driver, pendant pedals that didn't allow sporty heel-and-toeing, door pockets you couldn't get into when the doors were shut, water leaks around the windshield and mud splashes on the body sides thanks to the semi-exposed tires. But at a price more than twice as high, expectations were higher too, especially for performance.
Alex von Falkenhausen knew how to get more performance. Languishing at the works was a magnificent hemi-head version of the V-8 with four dual-throat downdraft Solexes. Refused the use of this, he squeezed more go from the standard engine. On a closed section of Autobahn north of Munich he was officially timed at 220.1 km/h, better than 136 mph, with the highest axle ratio offered.
While BMW’s engineers had been tinkering with four-cylinder engines based on half the aluminum V-8, the idea of a four took on energy when von Falkenhausen returned to BMW in 1954. After juicing up BMW’s motorcycle racing engines, he started from scratch on a new four. Early in 1959 he gave me a tour of his first effort, the Type 530.
Here was the origin of the chain-driven single-overhead-camshaft engine that served BMW so well for so long. It drove inclined overhead valves (65-degree included angle) through forged-steel rocker arms mounted on individual studs like those of the 1955 Chevrolet V-8. Exhaust piping was on the right and the inlet on the left.
The inlet manifold for the base engine had a clever dual-diameter design that took advantage of the progressive opening of the two throats of the Solex carburetor. In this form the 1,580 cc (86 x 68 mm) four produced 80 DIN bhp at 5,400 rpm in touring trim with an 8.0 to one compression ratio. Bumping up the ratio one point and fitting 40 mm Weber carburetors brought power to 110 bhp net for a sports version capable of 7,000 rpm.
When I was in Munich in 1958-59 the 530 prototypes were frequently spotted around town, little disguised by their Alfa Romeo grilles. Weighing 2,210 pounds, they were two-door sedans with a family resemblance to the 503, not unlike a Volvo Amazon in their proportions. But the 503’s planned styling had a 507-inspired horizontal grille and a reverse-angle rear window of the type much in vogue at the time. However the dramas of 1959—when BMW almost collapsed—meant that the 530 never moved beyond the stage of a set of handsome and quick prototypes. It dug much of the spadework for the BMW 1500 that would be launched in the next decade
.The summer of 1959 found me back in the USA, soon to have a spell of two years as editor of Car and Driver followed by a stint in GM public relations that took me to 1967. When I left the General, to pursue a free-lance writing career, I needed wheels. A friend whose advice I respected, Harry Newton, had just joined Max Hoffman’s outfit in a senior sales role. Hoffman had Munich’s latest offering, the 1600, in his range.
This was just two years after Max had decided to give up all his other franchises to concentrate entirely on BMW. He’d done so prematurely, he told me: "I gave up on the other car lines too early. I didn't keep Porsche and the others because I thought with only one car I could take it easy, and work only two or three hours a day. Now I am working harder than ever!" At first he lost money on BMW at a rate of about half a million dollars a year. Not until 1968 did the BMW line, in which Hoffman said he’d invested some $30 million, become profitable to him.
Max confessed to me that he’d been unenthusiastic about BMW’s idea of a smaller car, the 1600. He was unwilling to believe that a shrunken version of a larger model could be the solid hit that the two-door 1600 definitely became. When I asked Harry Newton about it he said, “Well, Karl, it’s the perfect car!” I believe I got a small break on the price when I acquired my gray 1600. It was my faithful daily driver for a decade, thanks to regular updates from Ignazio Franciamore’s talented Bronx dealership. As usual, Harry wasn’t wrong.
Hoffman could often be right, of course. He encouraged BMW to build the very successful TV high-performance version of the 1800 sedan, a car that helped establish the marque's sporting image. The 2002 edition of the 1600 was another Hoffman creation. He was convinced that a larger two-liter version of the 1600 engine could and should be tried in the small two-door car. When BMW declined to try it, Max said, “If you don’t put the engine in the car, I’ll go to your Munich distributor, Schorsch Meier, and have him do it.” Enter the 2002, available only in the U.S. for its first production year.
When BMW got serious about its sixes Hoffman faced the task of getting greater buyer acceptance that could help more people appreciate that BMW didn’t stand for “British Motor Works”—which many thought it did at one time. This was his reason for creating the “Bavaria”, which had the attractive retail price of $4,990. “They said I should sell it for $5,300,” Max told me. “But I said it had to be under $5,000, to make an impression with the customer. I made less on each car but I made more with the added volume. It’s a trick—if you can call it a trick.”
Then a designer at BMW, Paul Bracq gave me an insight into the Hoffman effect at BMW. “Mr. Hoffman is the eminence grise at BMW,” he said. “His views are very important. He tries every new car, and if he doesn’t like it, that car is dead.” His influence came at a price for his Munich colleagues, Bracq added: “Spending one afternoon with Mr. Hoffman is the same as working for eight days!”
Max Hoffman returned the compliment. “I have worked with many fine companies,” he told me. “The Germans, the Italians, others. But BMW is the best. They care about the buyer.”
In March of 1970 and August of 1971 I was back in Munich and visiting BMW. On my visits I caught up with Alex von Falkenhausen, by now justly famed as the company’s “engine pope”. He was scathing to me about Chevrolet’s new Vega, calling it “the worst car I ever drove! It’s very hard to pass a VW with it!” About NSU’s Wankel-engined Ro 80 he said, “It’s a very good car. If it had a BMW engine it would be perfect!”
I enjoyed being received into the home of BMW’s p. r. chief Carl T. Hoepner, whose witty and lively personality was an ideal match for the relaxed and life-loving Bavarian attributes of the company he served. His charming wife was the perfect hostess. Hoepner set up a private interview with Paul Hahnemann, not long at the head of the company’s board.
“I found here a really fine group of people,” Hahnemann told me, “the technicians and also the experienced labor force. That’s a great advantage to us.” He elaborated on the special sector he saw for BMW: “We couldn’t easily leave our image. We’ll remain the sporting comfortable car. There we still have an advantage over the volume producers.”
Hahnemann became famous in Germany as “Niche Paul” for his strict guidance of BMW’s product trajectory. He had a nifty way of summing up the BMW difference. “The Mercedes owner,” he smiled, “sits with the chauffeur beside him. The BMW driver sits with a beautiful woman beside him.”
Max Hoffman also found a nice analogy for the difference between the roundel and the star. “Before the war,” he said, “the Mercedes was a trucky car. And the BMW was like a little race horse, very sporty.” I’m happy to leave the last word to Max.