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Exactly 50 years ago, cars built by the Bavarian premium manufacturer began rolling off the assembly line at BMW Group Plant Dingolfing. Since 27 September 1973, the people who work at what is now the BMW Group’s largest European plant have produced Sheer Driving Pleasure more than twelve million times.
The figures presented to guests by Plant Director Christoph Schröder and Stefan Schmid, Chairman of the Dingolfing Works Council, in the light-hearted speech they delivered together, are impressive. In purely mathematical terms, with 12 million vehicles produced over the past five decades, that means a BMW rolled off the Dingolfing assembly line every 60 seconds: from the very first Iberian Red BMW 520 on that Thursday back in 1973, right up to today.
Almost two thirds of the production volume comes from Dingolfing’s core model series, the BMW 5 Series: The eighth generation, which has been in production since early July, will be hitting showrooms in the coming days. The range of models produced has gradually expanded over the decades and, today, with vehicles from the BMW 4 Series, 5 Series, 6 Series, 7 Series and 8 Series, as well as the BMW iX and BMW M GmbH models, it has reached a dimension that sets the benchmark for the whole automotive industry.
In addition to cars, vehicle components such as pressed parts and chassis and drive systems are also produced in Dingolfing. Component plant 02.20 is home to the Competence Centre for E-Drive Production, with about 2,400 employees, which supplies the BMW Group’s vehicle plants worldwide with electric motors and high-voltage batteries for production of plug-in hybrids and fully electric models. Since 2015 alone, more than one billion euros have been channelled into expanding the component plant, which is capable of producing electric powertrain components for more than 500,000 electrified vehicles.
Another important element of the Dingolfing location is the so-called Dynamics Centre, the heart of the BMW Group’s central aftersales logistics, which provides the global BMW and MINI retail organisation with original parts and accessories.
