Compatibility and Names Test: Where Did BMW Names Come From? Part 1
Have you ever thought of where do the names of BMW motorcycles come from? The history of the names of air-engines, motorcycles and car is full of straight lines and incredible curves and angles.
When BMW stated the production of air-engines the names for them were borrowed from the ancient history. Germany’s air corpus used Roman digits for splitting air-engines into classes according to their power and the majority of engine manufacturers adopted the system. Such a system was used for naming water- and air-cooled engines until 1932 – from BMW IIIa to BMW XV.
Nevertheless BMW car and motorcycle engines were not appropriate to be given wartime names. Instead of this there was created a new trade mark - Bayern-Motor after which usually came the digit that stood for the power. The new system had been developed on the base of technical data: the number of cylinders, the number of series and the project number. That was the way appeared the names like M4A1 and M2B15, which look quite mystique at first sight. But it is quite easy to figure out by splitting the names into parts. M stands for Motor (Germ. “engine”), the next digit – the number of cylinders, then comes the series and the number of the project. For instance, M4A1 – is a 4 cylinder (line engine) of the A series with the project number 1. The system was decided to be simplified in the middle of the 1920s. The number of cylinders was decided to be rejected in the name. Now the engine name featured the engine (M from Germ. “engine”), transmission (G from the Germ. “Getriebe”), motorcycle frame (R from the Germ. “Rahmen”), and the chassis for cars (F from the Germ. “Fahrgestell”).
Thus that was the way the first BMW motorcycle got its name. When the frame of the new bike was included on the project list it was given the project number R32. The engine got the name M2B33 which was later on shortened to M33. The transmission of the bike was named G 34. So the name was BMW R 32. R stands for Rad (from the Germ. “Motorrad” - motorcycle). By the way people often confuse Rad and think that it stands for the German word “Wheel.”
In the middle of 1920s the company had to find a new approach to naming its bikes. Before that each bike had its own frame construction but now the constructors started to use one and the same frame for different models (though they still differed by the modifications of engines). This flow of events lead to the fact that the names could no longer be given based on the frame project numbers. R remained by now it was followed by 2-digit number different from the number of the project. Bikes had to get new names. A little later a new system was introduced. According to this new system 1-cylinder models got 1-digit number and 2-cylinder ones – 2-digit numbers.
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