24 February 2020

The diary dates have been fixed: The season for “Wheels & Weißwürscht” kicks off on 2 May 2020 at BMW Group Classic on Moosacher Straße 66. On the first and third Saturday of every month, owners of vintage motors and recent classics can rock up, take a sneak peek and stroll around. The name of the event gives the game away: Every driver of a classic vehicle will receive a voucher for a free pair of sausages including a pretzel. Opening times are from 9.00 to 14.00. And from 10.00 to noon the doors of the fabulous vehicle collection of BMW Group Classic will be thrown open (by the way, Weißwürscht is a traditional Bavarian veal sausage).

Max Friz was the name of the engineer who generated a number of powerful ideas in the early years of Bayerische Motoren Werke. In 1917, he developed the outstanding aero-engine IIIa, but after 1918 Germany was prohibited from constructing any more engines for aircraft. The company successfully reinvented itself and sold the first Boxer engine produced by BMW to other manufacturers of motorcycles. That is until Friz took himself off to his apartment with a huge drawing board and designed his own motorcycle from scratch – the BMW R 32. The machine presented in 1923 enjoyed immediate racing success and it laid the foundation stone for everything that BMW waved off into the big wide world on two wheels.

In the modern age, motor-sport careers are meticulously planned down to the last detail. Surely nobody on earth would hit on the idea of going down the path adopted by Dieter Quester. The driver from Austria started off in a motor boat and finished up by becoming European Champion in 1962. But his ideal vehicle turned out to be the BMW 02, as Quester proved a number of times. In 1968, he drove it to victory in the European Touring Car Championship. In 1969, he repeated his success story, this time with a bolted-on turbocharger and 275 hp in the open class. The turbocharged engine mounted in the BMW 2002 ti was the first time that this type of power unit had been mounted in a racing car by BMW. A film of thrilling images posted in the BMW Group Press Club lets you experience the epic achievements of Quester with a maximum torque of 320 Nm.