Today, the BWM is synonymous with automotive excellence. But what most people probably don’t realize is that when the company started, it was neither called Bavarian Motor Works nor did it have anything to do with automobiles, much less motorcycles. BMW began taking shape near the turn of the 20th century with two men — Karl Rapp and Gustav Otto. In 1911, Otto opened a ‘flying machine factory’ in Munich named Otto-Werke, and Rapp started Rapp-Motorenwerke GmbH in 1913 to build aircraft engines. Over the
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