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The BMW Logo is Not What You Think it Is

Let us guess, white airplane propellers over blue skies? Wrong, wrong, and wrong! Sorry, but that rumor you’ve been spreading about the BMW logo is far from the truth. And unfortunately, the truth is much more mundane.

Where does the BMW logo come from?

The alternating blue and white quarters of the BMW logo are inspired by the Bavarian flag.

And that’s it. The white and blue are pulled straight from the flag. So how could this myth have started? Some people speculate it originated from an old BMW advertisement, which replaces two airplane propellers with BMW logos (pictured below).

The Logo’s Revolution

BMW was founded in 1917, when the founder of Rapp Motorenwerke, Karl Rapp, was terminated from his own company by his partners, who then had to create a new company name. The remaining partners decided on the name Bayerische Motorenwerke GmbH. From there, the Rapp logo evolved into what it is today. Below, you can see the logo’s evolution over nearly 100 years of motoring.

You can really pick out the bavarian influence in the first two BMW logos, with the gold, white, and blue.

There you have it

Propellor blades over the blue background sounds like a good explanation, considering BMW’s background in aviation, but it’s just not. This is a great opportunity to make up some other myths though…

We think BMW’s logo is just a representation of two sharks circling each other in the ocean. This design was created after BMW’s co-founder had to fight off two sharks in the Atlantic ocean, when his non-BMW powered airplane crashed in route to the United States. He survived, but the sharks may not have been so lucky.

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