The M Doctrine

By Author: autotool yuanyin
Total Articles: 21
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It is a given in the automobile industry that every manufacturer, large or small, will eventually race its products. Some, like Porsche, do it in a big way and actually build the reputation of their road cars on racetrack success. Other brands prefer to distance themselves far enough from the heat of battle to minimize the chances of getting singed.

Considering the multitude of possibilities between these two extreme racing postures, one current program that makes perfect sense is BMW's. The Bavarian marque doesn't spend the most money or win the most races, but it does reap a substantial return for its motorsports investment by instilling a few special road cars with technology perfected on the track. BMW's doctrine—that a race-bred high-performance car will be superior on the road—is the guiding light of its Motorsport division.

BMW started competing long before it started manufacturing cars if you count the noble pursuit of aviation altitude records. In modem terms, BMW Motorsport GmbH was established in 1972 when Jochen Neerpasch was lured away from Ford of Germany's competition department to coordinate ...
... BMW's racing activities. What started fifteen years ago with seven employees campaigning BMW 3.0CSL coupes in the European touring-car championship is now a huge profit center with 350 employees and a multitude of responsibilities.

Neerpasch got the ball rolling in 1973 with two major triumphs: BMW won the touring-car championship, and BMW powered cars knocked Ford out of contention for the Formula 2 championship. Five years later, Motorsport branched out from its pure-racing roots with the M1, a limited-production sports car with aspirations to compete in FIA Groups 4 and 5. Although the M1 did not succeed either commercially or competitively, it did give the BMW image a much-needed shot in the arm. More important, it scouted the path that other M-badged road-going BMWs would follow. The original M6 was born in 1983; it was followed by the M5 two years later and the M3 last year.

Today, Motorsport's operations are concentrated in two locations. A combination administrative center and engine-development lab is attached to the main BMW complex in Munich. A newer compound, in the northern suburb of Garching, houses the chassis-development department, the sales group, and car-assembly operations.

With more than twenty years of four-valve experience and one Formula 1 and several F2 championships under its belt, Motorsport's engine group has produced some of the most powerful racing engines the world has ever known. Its technological know-how flows freely between road and racing applications. BMW was the first manufacturer to make extensive use of engine-control electronics in Formula 1. And now that four-valve-combustion chamber engines are rapidly becoming essential equipment for high-performance road cars, the Motorsport engineers need only to fine-tune the designs they've campaigned on the racetracks for years to power their road rockets.

BMW Motorsport has a broad franchise in the design and development of M-badged models, but it doesn't necessarily worry about the nitty-gritty of mass production. Five thousand M3s must be assembled within a year for FIA Group A homologation, and that job is more suitable for BMW's regular production lines than for Motorsport's modest assembly facility. The M6 project, though smaller in scope, is still too large for the Garching shops, so production was handed over to the Dingolfing assembly plant.

The one car that Motorsport does assemble is the M5. Painted 5-series bodies are shipped from Dingolfing for the addition of interior trim, drivelines, and chassis parts. M5 production began at Motorsport two years ago with a run of 250 cars. This year, the facility will turn out 750 to 1000 cars.

In addition to three limited-production cars to fret over, Motorsport will supply F1 engines to Brabham and Arrows this year. The department also sells competition parts, offers trackside assistance, and administers the BMW Cup, a contingency fund that rewards anyone who wins a race in a BMW.

In contrast to BMW, many car companies go about such business as if they are embarrassed that racing is a natural outgrowth of building and selling automobiles.

Their executive officers, fearful of the safety Nazis and occasional attacks from their own stockholders, simply avoid discussing the issue, while the promotion department is busy making under-the-table deals with independent operations, which then design the racing engines, campaign the cars, and risk defeat. The problem with this kind of motorsports involvement is that it's a one-way deal: what's learned at the track is almost never applied to what's sold at the dealership. BMW's way—combining racing and limited production in one department—makes much more sense.

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