CityMotoring
Fox in Munich: Beer and BMW
The networking opportunities offered by the International Bar Association are unequalled. During the last 30 years I have attended IBA conferences all over the world.
Ronnie Fox, Past Master,
Motoring Correspondent
*Past Master Ronnie Fox is the Motoring Correspondent of City Solicitor. This article incorporates much appreciated contributions from Ali Hussain of Linklaters (research) and David Godfrey of Hill Dickinson (photographs).
A recent IBA conference in Munich enabled me both to catch up with longstanding friends and to create some new relationships. Two rather special visits were included in the conference: a visit to a Bavarian Beer Hall (about which the less said, the better) and a tour of the BMW factory kindly arranged by Dirk Kolvenbach of Heuking Kühn Lüer Wojtek.
BMW was founded in 1917 (under the name, Bayerische Motoren Werke). The company’s roots are in the manufacture of aircraft engines. The familiar blue and white roundel is said to represent the rotation of a propeller with white blades against a blue sky. Today BMW is a world-class car manufacturer. The brand stands for sporting capability, aesthetic appeal and reliability.
BMW’s first car was the Dixi, an Austin 7 made under licence in the 1920’s. The egg- shaped Isetta bubble cars manufactured by BMW (pictured) restored the company’s fortunes in the 1950’s. Today the group makes a huge range of BMW cars from the One series (a small family car) to the Seven
limousine
series as
well as Minis and Rolls- Royces, iconic motorcycles and
even bicycles.
The headquarters of BMW are in Munich. Over 30,000 BMW people work for BMW in that city. Some 900 cars are made each day in the Munich factory which I
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visited. Sheet steel is moulded into floor pans and body panels by huge hydraulic presses. Spot-welding and painting is carried out almost entirely by highly sophisticated robots. We were mesmerized by the sight of robots gently opening doors and raising bonnets before spraying paint inside each car from every conceivable angle. Four coats of different kinds of paint are carefully applied and allowed to dry. The precise composition of the paint, the thickness of each layer and the length of the drying period are all carefully controlled.
The next step is to engrave a vehicle
identification number onto each body. That is the start of the production line. Every car is built to order. BMW customers choose from a huge range of options. Computers enable
each customer’s car to be
assembled with the specified combination of body, engine, transmission and trim. It is in on the production line that one sees workers installing equipment which has been delivered at precisely the right time and place. The “marriage” of body, engine and transmission takes place with the assistance of machines closely supervised by men and women.
People are still involved in a few of the inspection processes. Our tour guide (72 years old and 33 years with BMW) explained that to an increasing extent quality control is now carried out by computers. For example, the underside of each car passes over a digital camera: a computer then compares what the camera has seen with digital versions of zero-fault reference photographs.
My overwhelming impressions were of technical sophistication and obsessive attention to detail. The walkways were incredibly clean.
(Cont. on page 15
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