Parked BMWs bursting into flames leave owners with questions ABC News

BMW originally an initialism for Bayerische Motoren Werke in German, or Bavarian Motor Works in English) is often a German multinational company which currently produces luxury automobiles and motorcycles, plus produced aircraft engines until 1945.The company was founded in 1916 and it has its headquarters in Munich, Bavaria. BMW produces autos in Germany, Brazil, China, India, South Africa, the United Kingdom, plus the United States. In 2015, BMW was earth's twelfth largest producer of automobiles, with 2,279,503 vehicles produced. The Quandt family are long-term shareholders in the company, using the remaining shares of public float.Automobiles are marketed underneath the brands BMW (with sub-brands BMW M for performance models and BMW i for plug-in electric cars), Mini and Rolls-Royce. Motorcycles are marketed underneath the brand BMW Motorrad.The name BMW is definitely an abbreviation for Bayerische Motoren Werke. The German name isn't grammatically correct, because motorenwerke is usually a single word in German. The term Bayerische Motorenwerke (which is used in several German publications and advertisements in past times) means English as Bavarian Motor Works, which was used by BMW for marketing products in English-speaking countries. The suffix AG, short for Aktiengesellschaft, signifies an incorporated entity which is of shareholders.The terms Beemer, Bimmer and Bee-em are normally used slang for BMW inside the English language and therefore are sometimes used interchangeably for cars and motorcycles.In the United States, a lot of people prescribe that "beemer" ought to be used especially for motorcycles and "bimmer" ought to be used for cars. Some of these people are convinced that "true aficionados" get this to distinction and those that don't are "uninitiated." Usage in North American mainstream media also varies, for example The Globe and Mail of Canada prefers Bimmer and calls Beemer a "yuppie abomination", and also the Tacoma News Tribune says that it must be "auto snobs" who make use of the terms to differentiate between cars and motorcycles.The circular blue and white BMW logo or roundel evolved from the circular Rapp Motorenwerke custom logo, that the BMW company grew, combined with all the blue and white colors with the flag of Bavaria. The BMW logo still used today was made in 1917, albeit with assorted minor styling changes.The origin with the logo is usually thought to be a portrayal on the movement of your aircraft propeller together with the white blades cutting by having a blue sky. However, this portrayal was first utilized in a BMW advertisement in 1929 - twelve years following logo was developed - so this is just not the origin on the logo itself.