The True Story Behind The BMW logo

Several years ago, I watched on TV the nice movie Finding Forrester (2000, Sean Connery and Rob Brown). There, the main character ("Jamal") tells a fun fact about the origin of the BMW log , the famous German Auto company.
Well, he explains that it represents "blades of a plane moving into the sky". This because, at the beginning,  BMW was "mainly" devoted to construction of aircraft motors.




I have took for granted that cool explanation until today, when I decided to check...
and, keeping the long story short, the facts are a bit different.

The truth is that blue and white represent just the colors (in reversed order) of Bavaria, the region in the South Germany where the BMW was founded.





Indeed, BMW stays for Bayerische Motoren Werke i.e. Bavarian Motor Works. 
Only in the 1920s people pushed the new (and cooler) interpretation.

You can read more about this hoax in this interesting article by Stephen Williams on the New York Times.

 What do we learn from this story? At least two things...
First, do not believe everything you see or heard on TV and, second (and even worse) not always the reality beats the imagination!

Sources:
bmw-roundel-not-born-from-planes

 
Other fun facts on this blog

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