Vintage BMW Motorsport Sweatshirt

This Vintage BMW Motorsport Sweatshirt boasts a timeless design, being crafted with cotton and polyester. Featuring the iconic BMW Motorsport logo.

Even today, many people still believe that the BMW logo depicts a rotating propeller. How come? The myth of the BMW propeller came about years after the first company logo. A BMW ad from 1929 showed an airplane with the BMW logo in the rotating propeller. At the beginning of the global economic crisis, the ad was trying to promote a new aircraft engine that BMW was building under license from Pratt & Whitney. The propeller interpretation fit very well into the advertising image of the young company, as it underlined the company’s roots and its expertise in aircraft construction.

So the story of the BMW logo is based on a legend – a legend that still lives on today. “For a long time, BMW made little effort to correct the myth that the BMW badge is a propeller,” explains Fred Jakobs of BMW Group Classic. So according to the expert, sticking to the story that the BMW emblem is a propeller would not be entirely wrong. It’s not strictly true that there is a propeller in BMW’s company logo, though. Constant repetition has made this explanation a self-propagating urban myth. “This interpretation has been commonplace for 90 years, so in the meantime it has acquired a certain justification,” Jakobs explains.

The first key to the meaning of the BMW logo are its colors: white and blue are the colors of the State of Bavaria in Germany, home of BMW. A 1929 BMW ad depicts the BMW emblem, complete with the four colored quadrants, in a spinning airplane propeller. The interpretation that the BMW logo represents a propeller has endured ever since.