When Karl-Heinz Kalbfell became head of Motorsport in 1988, he set about building upon the success of his predecessors. Jesse Crosse visited Kalbfell and team to learn their secret – Performance Car
While red, violet, and blue might not be the sort of combination you’d choose for the May Ball, just a glimpse of those colours is enough to set the pulses of most cars enthusiasts racing.
Because that distinctive tri-colour stripe is what-sets certain BMWs aside from most other BMWs, and usually slaps another 20 per cent on the price into the bargain.
Not without cause, though – because the letter ‘M’ in the famous emblem stands for Motorsport, and on a BMW’s bootlid it generally means business.
Most people have heard of the ‘M’ cars. The mid-engined M1 sportscar of the 1970s is probably the most famous. It, in turn, lent a close derivative of its powerplant, the 24-valve, 300bhp 3.5 litre straight-six to the M635CSi coupe of 1984, the M5 due in the Uk in right-hand drive form early next year.
1987 was also the year of the M3, the four-cylinder, 2.3 litre 3-Series ‘homologated’ car, which took saloon car racing by storm, with wins in the German Championship, the European Championship and the World Championship.
The ‘M-Power’ late starts in 1972, when a certain Bob Lutz thought it might be a good idea to establish a specialist division to look after BMW’s racing interests.
That wasn’t the start of BMW’s racing successes though, far from it. There was, of course, a heavy involvement in motor racing both pre-war and post-war, but it was in the 1960s that BMW started along the saloon car racing path that they’ve stuck to ever since. Following the BMW 1500 in 1961, the 110bhp, 112mph 1800 __ which arrived three years later won 27 out of the 28 races entered in 1964. And following those successes a limited edition car, the BMW 1800 TiSA (Tourismo International Sport-Aushtuhrung) was sold to 200 lucky customers, for Dm13, 500 each.
The First Of Many
In 1966 Hubert Hahne started the ball rolling properly. By winning the European Championship with an 1800 TiSA and Dieter Quester followed that up in 1968 and 1969 with a 2002 and 2002 turbo.
In 1972, Jochen Neerspach was norminated to start the new division at Preussen Strasse in Munich and a string of successes followed.
Other bosses would follow in his footsteps during the next two decades, as BMW Motorsport grew – there was Scheu, Prommesberger, Flohr and finally Kalbfell.
But BMW Motorsport GmbH have changed a lot since their early days. They have evolved from a simple toot designed to win races, into a sophisticated instrument whose function is embroiled with development of some of BMW AG’s major products. While they haven’t lost that innovative capability, and the ability to produce winners on the race tracks, they are also responsible for designing and producing series production cars that reflect, says Karl-Heinz Kalbfell, the very heart of BMW Kalbfell, at 40, hes made it.
He joined BMW AG’s communications department in 1987 and was leading it by 1985. In October 1988 he was made head of Motorsport.
On the wall at the end of his office is a variation of the famous ‘M-Power’ logo – I reads ‘K-Power’, a leaving present from his colleagues at BMW AG. On the window sill behind his desk is an ornamental mask with one eye blacked in; it is another gift, this time from Japanese colleagues.
Setting Out Objectives
When you start a job, explained Karl-Heinz Kalbfell, looking at mask: ‘you paint one eye black when you’ve set your targets. You paint the other eye black when you’ve achieved those targets.’
And he’s got plenty of those to fulfill. Motorsport’s production plant is at Garching, a Munich suburb. That’s where the new M5 is handbuilt, while the M3 is now built at BMW AG, as are all Motorsport-series engines. The engine development division is at Preussen Strasse, together with four engine dynos, and the uual array of exhibits, including the old Formula one engines.
‘We have capacity for 2000 cars at Garching,’ Kalbfell continued, ‘and we’ve just finished the last of the 180 M3 Convertibles. Our sales overall, including the M3s built at the main plant, will be about 4500cars. In total we’ve built 15,000 M3s to date and that would be too many to consider building just at Garching.’
So how much have Motorsport changed? How much time is devoted to racing and how much to the roadgoing specials that the division has become so famous for?
It’s difficult to describe that exactly, because my way of organising this company is to link all the specialists together a little bit, so the engine specialists, for example, are working on both racing engines and series engines. But to give an idea I’d say the split is roughly one-third racing and two-thirds street cars.
The company has one philosophy and that’s all under one roof. We don’t operate like a mini BMW AG. Today Motorsport has two important roles. One is racing, where we prove our engines’ reliability and performance and try and produce the best handling cars. On the other hand we have the direct link with racing by building unusual series cars for a small number of people who don’t reflect the average BMW customer. ‘So BMW Motorsport is not a racing department, a racing company, or a production company, it’s a high performance company.’
BMW were traditionally a conservative company, and it’s taken two decades to turn them into the creative and progressive body that they are today. But in the early 1970s the turn-around was only half complete and that begs the question as to how such a radical core as the fledgling Motorsport division has dovetailed into the corporate whole over the years – and been tolerated by it.
‘I don’t think ‘tolerate’ is the right word: they need us. People often expect that I’m a racing man, but I’m a sales and marketing man and that’s the way I run this company.’
‘My chief consideration has to be what the need is for BMW AG, to have a company like this one. In the 1970s, the products were very heavily directed towards sportiness only. Now it’s completely different. Today the limits on everyday motoring are increasing and traffic conditions will be moderated. But on the other hand companies must continue to improve the efficiency of their technology, and that’s a good reason to place an even stronger emphasis on racing in the future.’
Another division of BMW is BMW Technik GmbH, the research division responsible for the Z1. So together with the main R5D facility that makes three separate engineering facets of the company contributing to the output of the company as a whole BMW Technik are involved principally with research into new techniques and materials, while Motorsport are concerned with developing what’s already there. But major new projects like the M3 have to start somewhere, and it’s usually as the result of a single good idea. And although Kalbfell points out that he wasn’t around when the M3 project was started, it’s a good example.
‘It’s really up to the strengths of managing directors in getting their ideas across tot eh board on individual projects,’ he says. ‘Motorsport is an independent company owned 100 per cent by BMW AG, we have our own finance and sales departments, but where the resources already exist in the parent company then we use those, it would not make sense, for example, to build a separate distribution system. But we are responsible for fulfilling our own financial targets, and it’s up to us to find the right products.’
Forward Planning
How about their contribution to the main R6D department?
‘I mainly hear what they are planning, because their thinking is in the longer term. We plan from five to ten years ahead, though at ten years our plans are relatively open; at five they’re fixed.’
The M3 will carry on racing for another two years. After that, says Herr Kalbfell, ‘we’ll look at other options to remain competitive. No, there isn’t any likelihood of larger series cars returning to racing, the future is still with the 3-Series.’
There’s also no likelihood, says the Motorsport boss, of any project concerning the Z1. ‘There isn’t any capacity at the moment anyway.’
There are plans, however, to provide a greater service to individuals wanting modifications made to their existing cars. It’s not a service that BMW advertise, but usually happens as a result of customers asking their dealers about it. It’s an area that Kalbfell is anxious to expand.
‘We did 200 last year and at a guess, it might be nice to do, perhaps, 500 this year.’
But the new M5 forms the principal thrusts of Motorsport’s activities at the moment. And it’s that project that is perhaps one of the most impressive, in production terms particularly, to be found inside a major manufacturer anywhere in the world today. Because a few miles away at the Garching plant, on the ironically named Daimier Strasse, M5s are assembled entirely by hand, each on one of 20 individual hoists.
The M5 shops at Garching are breathtaking. Red-tiled floors are scrubbed by machine at the end of every day, leaving a perfume I the air more reminiscent of someoen’s kitchen than of a factory.
Siegfried Schwarz started with BMW in 1965 as a race and rally mechanic and has been at Motorsport since 1973. He is the man charged with making sure that 2000 M5s leave the plant in the next year and he’s got about 82 people to do it with. Same 72 of those are productive mechanics and ten are quality inspectors. There are about 110 people all-told – including engineers, storekeepers and so forth.
He starts with bodyshells which arrive from the Dingolfing plant complete with radiators, plumbing and interior trim. Seats are only installed for convenient transportation, they come straight out again. The shells are cleaned, put on a jig and initial work is done to the underbody, including the fitting of heat reflecting material to protect it from the hot exhaust.
From there, the cars are wheeled into a second shop and are installed on one of the 20 hoists. Next door 35 or so of the 24 valve, 3.5 litre 315bhp engines lie in racks, waiting to be built into complete front axle assemblies, each engine, built at the Munich factory, is the rough Deutschmark equivalent of a complete BMW 316. A few feet away, rear axles get the same treatment.
Next door again, one men assembles each car, unwittingly endowing it with his signature.
‘Every mechanic has his own individual style’, explains Peter Locke, who’s in charge of export sales. ‘The quality inspectors can work out who built each car without being told.’
The mechanics are unusually skilled, and most started in specialised crafts like tool-making. A new routine of quality checking was instigated recently, whereby senior mechanics are charged with checking work in progress, a better solution than having quality inspectors looking over the mechanics’ shoulders.
At the far end of the assembly shop is the upholstery department, where there’s a machine that can shave any of the many hides in stock down to a thickness of 0.3 millimetres. You can have almost anything you want.
‘If you want your trunk finished in leather then we will do it for you’, says Peter Locke, ‘One customer wanted his dash trimmed in water buffalo hide’, he continues, uncovering an incomplete M5 dashboard which had been lying on one of the finished tables.
‘The problem is, water buffalo hide fades in strong sunlight. We put this in writing to him to make sure he understood, but we’ve given him what he wants, nevertheless.’
When the cars leave the hoists they are drivable and go back over the road for the ABS rolling road tests, suspension setting, and finally to the finish line where they are checked, waxed, road tested (every car is tested for 30kilometres) and then sent to the dealer.
Each car is spoken for before it is built, no stocks are held, and a customer can come and see his car being built if he wants to.
The M5 is 100 per cent quality controlled, so every single nut and bolt that goes on it is checked during and after it’s completed.
They’re all left-handed drive and German spec at the moment. British, US and Canadian spec cars will start production in the spring of 1990.
It’s a remarkable feat, and it’s astonishing to see it coming from a major manufacturer. Siegfried Schwarz reckons the principles operated there work well for everyone. Mechanics are often working on different things, since the number of areas varies from day to day. So it’s a flexible system and there’s better motivation for those concerned.
If they product they build there is anything to go by they’re right.
Earlier, Karl-Heinz Kalbfell was understandably cagey when questioned about the forthcoming 850i Coupe, and thought it probably ‘too good’ to need much doing to it. That probably means there are no plans for a more sporting version at present. After all, the new M5 was announced within six months of the introduction of the 5-Series itself.
But the M635CSi ceased production a couple of months ago, and it would e nice to think of another coupe coming from the red-floored workshops and wearing the distinctive ‘M’ badge on its boot.
Meanwhile, we can only sit and watch the progress of what must be one of the all-time crack divisions in the car industry. Its turnover has gone from Dm50 million in 1985 to Dm300 million today.
And that really cannot be at all bad for a company employing just 450 people, can it?
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September 5, 2009
1986 - 1989, Articles