It’s commonly believed the BMW badge is an aeroplane propeller, but is it really?

Have you ever looked at the BMW badge and wondered what it is actually supposed to represent?

You may have heard that it was designed to look like an airplane propeller. 

And that would make sense, as back in 1916, when the company was founded, it was a manufacturer of aircraft engines. 

However, when it comes to the iconic BMW logo, there’s a bit more to it. 

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Bayerische Motoren Werke AG, better known as BMW, has been operating for more than 100 years and has created some of the world’s best-known and beloved cars, including the BMW M1, the BMW M3 Sport Evolution, and the BMW 7 Series. 

With more than a century under its belt, BMW vehicles are sold across the world, and its blue and white badge is immediately recognizable. 

But what does the badge actually represent?

“Many people believe the BMW logo is a stylized propeller. But the truth is a little different,” said BMW archive director Fred Jakobs.

When BMW was included in the commercial register in 1917, it didn’t have a company logo, but one was created for it later that year. 

The first ever BMW badge was round with a black outer ring of the symbol, which was now bounded by two gold lines and bore the letters BMW.

The company also wanted to represent its home state of Bavaria in the logo, so the quarters of the inner circle on the BMW badge were filled in the state colors of the State of Bavaria – white and blue. 

However, to keep with laws surrounding the use of state coats of arms or other symbols of sovereignty on commercial logos, BMW inverted the colors. 

More than a decade on in 1929, BMW published an advertisement that showed the BMW badge, with its four colored quadrants, in a spinning airplane propeller, and this is where the myth that it was designed to look like a propeller came from. 

In 1942, a BMW publication repeated the story that the BMW badge was made to look like a spinning propeller. 

“For a long time, BMW made little effort to correct the myth that the BMW badge is a propeller,” Jakobs said. 

As a result, he reckons that saying the logo is a propeller ‘would not be entirely wrong’. 

“This interpretation has been commonplace for 90 years, so in the meantime it has acquired a certain justification,” he added. 

So there you go – it turns out there’s a lot more to the little badge than meets the eye.The post It’s commonly believed the BMW badge is an aeroplane propeller, but is it really? appeared first on Supercar Blondie.