BMW

On Tuesday, we toured the BMW Welt (World), Museum and Factory.  It was a guided tour of each, and very informative.  It started and ended in the Welt area. The building is magnificent with a very open structure, only supported in three places with a roof that represents a huge cloud.  To impress visitors, there is a motorcycle exhibition twice a day where a rider goes up and down the stairways sometimes balancing on the front wheel when coming down.  Impressive and loud inside the rather hard surfaced walls of glass and steel.

Inside the Welt with "Cloud Roof"

Motorcycle "Exhibitionist"

From the Welt we entered the Museum that was filled with motorcycles and autos from the very earliest to the most recent models produced.  BMW started as an airplane engine manufacturer, however at the end of the first world war Germany was not allowed to produce any aircraft or aircraft equipment.  Therefore they started producing motorcycles and eventually automobiles.  All BMW Motorcycles except for the most modern racing versions are shaft driven rear wheels with Boxter (horizontally opposed) engines.

First BMW Airplane Engine 1917

First BMW Motorcycle 1923

First BMW Auto 1928 Dixi

Early BMW Delivery Vehicle 1930

The Museum building itself was interesting.  It is three levels connected by ramps taking you between themed exhibition rooms.  The walls are lit entirely by computer controlled LED lights behind frosted glass.  The patterns in some rooms are constantly in motion, sometimes presenting pictures.  Very interesting.  
A computer controlled set of steel balls presented a dynamic sculpture of the outline of a car that is where concepts start.  From there a clay model is produced, and finally a complete car.  
There were several rooms devoted to racing cars and their history.  Ben, Bill and Steve will know more about these cars than I ever will, but it was still interesting.  The guide was very clear that the whole philosophy of BMW is to produce Aircraft Engines, Motorcycles and Automobiles that are innovative and leaders in technology.

Some of the racing cars:

1938 the 328 sport coup Winner of the 1938  Mille Miglia 2000 litre class    

1997 McLaren F1 GTR

Then there were some cars that weren't named BMW, but were manufactured with BMW components such as engines:

 

And lastly, of course there is the funniest car of all, the Isetta.

1955 Isetta

 

The tour of the Welt, Museum and Factory took over three hours but was well worth it.  In the factory, it was impressive with the cleanliness, number of robots and few workers to produce the cars.  Everything was shown from the stamping of the body parts to outfitting and engine assembly.  At this plant around 1600 cars are produced daily with 25% sold in Germany, 25% sold in Europe, 25% sold in the US, and 25% sold to the rest of the world, mostly to China.  The US has the most restrictions and regulations of any country, probably for safety and emissions related issues.  Unfortunately, there were no photos allowed in the factory.  (Gary)