Introduction
BMW Company was established in 1913. The person who founded the company was Karl Rapp. Before he worked in a German aircraft company as a director. He started the business in a very small scale. The name was Rapp Motor Works. In 1917 he resigned, led by Austrian engineer Franz-Joseph Popp, who changed the name to Bavarian Motor Works. In the same year Max Frizz, the chief engineer designed the company 's first aircraft engine and when the treaty of Versailles prohibited German companies from producing aircraft engines in 1919.
Then BMW switched to making airbrakes to railway cars. Then in 1923, he developed the company 's first motorcycle, R32 that held world speed records for motorcycle during most of the 1930 's.
In 1928 the company entered the automobile business by acquiring Fahrzeugwerke Eisenach (Eisenach Vehicle Factory), a maker of small cars based in Eisenach, Germany. In the 1930s BMW began producing a line of larger touring cars and sports cars, introducing its highly successful model-the 328 sports car-in 1936.
After World War II ended in 1945, Allied forces dismantled the company 's main factories. BMW made kitchen and garden equipment before introducing a new, inexpensive motorcycle to the German market in 1948. The company 's return to auto production in the 1950s resulted in poor sales. In the 1960s the company turned its fortunes around by focusing on sports sedans and compact touring cars, and it began to compete with Mercedes-Benz in the luxury-car markets of Europe and the United States. BMW 's U.S. sales peaked in 1986 but then dropped steeply, partly due to competition from two new luxury cars-Lexus, made by Toyota Motor Corporation, and Infiniti, made by Nissan Motor Co., Ltd. The 1989 collapse of the Berlin Wall led to a boom in car sales in Europe, and in 1992 BMW outsold Mercedes-Benz in Europe for the first time.
In 1990 BMW formed a joint venture with the British