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Berlin-Rome race

BMW’s Italian Designers Part 6

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By Jackie Jouret
Photos courtesy The BMW Archive

When it emerged from the destruction of World War II, BMW got back into business, first with motorcycles (in 1948), and then with high-end automobiles (in 1951). That was a logical strategy given BMW’s particular circumstances, but it began to fail by the mid-1950s. Even as the German economy was improving, BMW’s full-size sedans remained too expensive for most buyers. Worse, the motorcycle market was tanking, as riders abandoned two-wheelers in favor of motorcycle-engined microcars, which kept their occupants dry and warm regardless of the weather. [Read more…] about BMW’s Italian Designers Part 6

BMW’s Italian Designers Part 5

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By Jackie Jouret
Photos courtesy The BMW Archive

When BMW introduced its first postwar automobile, the 501 sedan, at the 1951 Frankfurt auto show, the company was announcing its resurrection as an automaker following the near-total destruction of its factories during World War II. BMW had also lost its automobile plant in Eisenach to the postwar division of Germany: Eisenach fell within the Soviet sector, and the BMW plant was appropriated as a spoil of war.

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BMW’s Italian Designers Part 4

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By Jackie Jouret
Photos courtesy The BMW Archive

As we saw in the first three installments of this series, BMW had fostered an association with Touring of Milan before World War II put an end to civilian automotive activities in 1941. That association had resulted in the Superleggera coupe that won the 1940 Mille Miglia, a pair of roadsters for which Touring crafted the bodywork to a design by BMW’s Wilhelm Meyerhuber, and a trio of stunning roadsters created for the proposed Berlin-Rome race.

One might have expected the Touring-BMW partnership to have resumed after the war, given the competitive and aesthetic success of those automobiles, but it did not. When BMW began building cars again in 1951, the company turned instead to Pinin Farina for the external proposal that would be weighed against an in-house design for the 501 sedan.

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BMW’s Italian Designers Part 3

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By Jackie Jouret
Photo courtesy The BMW Archive

Among the most fascinating races of the pre-war era is one that never took place: the Berlin-Rome race. Announced in June 1937 for the following year, the race had been conceived by Adolf Hühnlein, an early follower of Adolf Hitler, who in 1931 became head of Germany’s National Socialist Driver Corps (or NSKK, to use its German acronym). The NSKK was in charge of all motoring and motorsport activities for the Nazi government, and Hühnlein ensured that German racing was well-supported in service of its propaganda value. A high-speed race on the newly-built freeways connecting the two Axis capitals would be ideally suited to that purpose, and it would allow German and Italian automakers to highlight their technical superiority where aerodynamics were concerned.

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