What’s the Story Behind the BMW M Stripes?
Each color in the performance division’s iconic badge has its own distinct meaning.
The letter M, says BMW, is the most powerful in the world. As proof of its point, the company has long offered performance-tuned variants of its cars like the lust-worthy BMW M8 Competition, all honed to perfection by its specialist BMW M division. The M stands for “motorsports”, and cars which have received the BMW M treatment typically sport the company’s iconic, triple-striped “M” badge on their trunk and/or grille.
But have you ever wondered about that logo, and why BMW chose those specific colors for its stripes? If you have, not alone. So did Raphael Orlove, features editor and self-professed car nerd over at Jalopnik, who just shared a short video on the topic. And so too had quite a few others, as it turns out.
In making his video, Orlove rolled up sleeves and delved through the Internet’s murky depths, trawling prehistoric blog posts and forum threads for the truth. It turns out that while the answer is somewhat uncertain, and has been further muddied by BMW itself, there’s a pretty strong contender for most credible theory.
The light blue stripe in the M badge, obviously, mirrors the color used in the quadrants of the inner circle in BMW’s own logo, which in turn represents the color found in the Bavarian flag. The precise shade of blue used varies quite significantly over the years, though, both in BMW’s own logo and also in the Bavarian flag.
And what of the other two colors? Orlove points to an article entitled “History: BMW ///M logo colors explained” by Horatiu Boeriu, founder and CEO of BMWBLOG. Per Boeriu’s article, which was published back in April 2009 and also offered up paint, pantone and RGB color codes for the three distinctive stripes, the red represents Texaco, an early BMW M partner. The purple center stripe, meanwhile, was a combination of the other two stripes and intended to represent the coming together of the two companies.
It’s an interesting theory, but one glaring issue stuck out to Orlove. If you look back at period photos of the 3.0 CSL, the first BMW M project, Texaco’s logo is nowhere to be seen. In fact, it’s Castrol who’s to be found emblazoned on the side of Hezemans, Stuck, Quester and Amon’s works ’73 3.0 CSL cars. And a year later, Castrol was still there when Stuck and Ickx’s 3.0 CSL took the win at the Salzburgring.
That being the case, Orlove puts forward another theory: That it’s actually Castrol who is hinted at by the red stripe, since that’s also one of their official colors. And as it happens, Orlove found a forum thread on ZHP Mafia where a poster had already run that same theory by Boeriu, the author of the article which started the Texaco theory. His assessment? It’s unconfirmed, but it’s plausible.
As for that center stripe, if you looked at us a bit funny when we said it’s purple, there’s a reason for that too: The center stripe is actually no longer purple in the current version of the M logo. The exact date that change took place is uncertain, although the aforementioned forum thread dates it to at least as far back as the early 2010s. Nowadays, the center stripe is officially just a darker version of the same BMW / Bavaria blue used in the light blue stripe.
For more on the BMW M story, and how the motorsports marque’s roots can be traced back to a high-level poaching from rival Ford, watch Orlove’s video above and read his article “The Unlikely Story Of How This Ford Gave Birth To BMW M“. And when you’re done, keep reading here to find out why BMW M cars aren’t just fast, they’re also among the most reliable sports cars on the market!
Photos: BMW