BMW’s headquarters and its oldest car plant sit on the same site in north Munich, a few
hundred metres apart, and the arrangement is unusual enough to be worth explaining: the
company’s head office looks directly at the factory floor. This page covers both — the
four-cylinder tower that everyone photographs, and the plant behind it, which is in the
middle of the largest change in its hundred-year history.
Where BMW’s headquarters actually is
The address is Petuelring 130, Munich, in the Milbertshofen district. Four buildings
matter, and they are all within walking distance of each other:
| Building | Opened | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| The “Four-Cylinder” tower | 18 May 1973 | BMW AG head office |
| BMW Museum | 18 May 1973 | The bowl-shaped building beside the tower |
| BMW Welt | 17 October 2007 | Delivery and brand centre, across the road |
| Plant Munich | 1922 | The factory the whole site grew around |
The tower and the museum were opened on the same day, 18 May 1973. BMW’s own centenary
history records that “construction of the structural shell of the ‘Four-Cylinder’ and the
‘Museum Bowl’ had been completed in time for the Olympic Games the year before” — the
buildings were finished on the outside for Munich’s 1972 Olympics and fitted out
afterwards.
On 29 October 1999 both were designated heritage sites and placed
under legal protection. That is a genuinely unusual status for a corporate headquarters
built in the 1970s, and it means the shape of the building is now fixed by law rather than
by preference.
A fifth building matters to what BMW does even though visitors do not see it. The
Research and Engineering Centre — today the Research and Innovation Centre, universally
called the FIZ — was opened on 27 April 1990, also in Milbertshofen. BMW describes it as
the workplace of “around 7,000 researchers, engineers, designers, managers and
technicians”. Design and engineering therefore happen on the same square kilometre as
final assembly.
The plant, in numbers
| Opened | 1922 |
| Location | Milbertshofen, Munich, Germany |
| VIN plant code | F |
| Approximate annual output | 250,000 vehicles |
| Built there recently | 3 Series, i4 |
The plant code is the practical detail. It is the eleventh character of the VIN, so any
BMW built in Munich can be identified from its number without opening the bonnet — see
how to decode a BMW VIN, or put a number straight
into our VIN decoder.
Munich is the plant that built the 3 Series, which makes it the origin of a great many
of the cars in this archive. It is not, however, where most American BMWs come from: the X
models are built at Spartanburg in South Carolina, and
we go through the split in is BMW German.
The site is being converted to build electric cars only
This is the part that makes Plant Munich currently the most interesting factory in the
BMW network, and BMW has been unusually specific about it in public.
Series production of the new BMW i3 — the second Neue Klasse model — starts at Munich
in August 2026, and it is the first plant in BMW’s global network to build the new
architecture in series. From 2027 the Munich plant will build all-electric
vehicles only. The investment stated for the conversion is around
650 million euros.
The scale of the rebuild is easier to grasp from what was replaced. BMW describes a new
body shop and a completely new vehicle assembly area with new logistics, “set up on an area
spanning around a third of the plant’s footprint”. The new assembly hall stands where
engine manufacturing used to be — the part of the plant that gave BMW its name is now
where the electric cars are put together.
The body shop figures are worth quoting because they describe what a modern car factory
actually is: 800 new industrial robots, an automation rate of around 98%, and the number
of joining processes cut to five.
And the constraint the whole project ran under: production continued throughout.
“Production of up to 1,000 vehicles a day” carried on while a third of the site was
rebuilt around it.
What the rebuild actually changed
BMW published enough detail about the conversion to describe it shop by shop, which is
unusual and worth recording.
In the press shop, “steel and aluminium boards are turned into tens of
thousands of components on highly automated press lines daily”, with press and tool
standards shared across BMW’s global network — so tools can be swapped between plants
and staff can move between them. An AI-assisted camera system checks quality before an
underground transport system moves parts to the body shop. Offcuts of steel and aluminium
are “collected, sorted and then used to manufacture new steel or aluminium coils”.
In the body shop, built for the Neue Klasse and planned using a virtual
twin: 800 new industrial robots, an automation rate of around 98%, and the number of joining
processes reduced to five.
In the paint shop, automated surface inspection uses cameras and
artificial intelligence to find deviations and record them digitally, and automated surface
processing corrects them during the running process. Exhaust air is treated by an
electrically powered eRTO process, with heat recovery and water-saving cycles.
In assembly — the hall that used to be engine manufacturing —
vehicles, systems and tools are interconnected, with digital live tracking and automated
inline quality checks. BMW notes that during assembly the i3 “digitally transmits the status
of up to 20,000 features”.
The number worth carrying away from all of that is the last one. A car on the line
reporting twenty thousand of its own attributes is a different manufacturing proposition
from one being inspected by eye, and it is why BMW describes the plant as digital rather
than merely automated.
What is not built in Munich
The electric drivetrain is assembled from three other BMW sites, which is a useful
corrective to the idea that a plant builds a car.
- High-voltage batteries come from a new assembly plant at
Irlbach-Straßkirchen in Lower Bavaria, about 90 minutes away, which supplies Gen6 batteries
to Munich and other German locations. - The electric motor is produced at
Plant Steyr in Austria, where BMW has been making drivetrains
for more than forty years — rotor, stator, inverter and transmission all on site. - The motor housing is cast at BMW’s aluminium foundry at Plant
Landshut and shipped to Steyr.
So a Munich-built electric BMW carries an Austrian motor in a Bavarian-cast housing with
a battery from Lower Bavaria. The VIN records the plant that assembled the car, and that is
all it records.
Why the headquarters looks like an engine
BMW’s own description of the building is drier than the nickname: “the new
administrative centre made up of four circular segments”. Four cylinders in a square is
also, of course, the layout of a four-cylinder engine, and the tower has been called the
“Vierzylinder” — the Four-Cylinder — since it opened. BMW uses the nickname in its own
historical materials, in quotation marks, which is about as close to an official
endorsement as a nickname gets.
The museum beside it is the counterpart and is referred to in the same materials as the
“Museum Bowl”: a low, round, silver building, deliberately the opposite of the tower in
every dimension. The two were built as one project and opened on the same day, and the
1999 heritage designation covers both together.
What the tower is not is a visitor attraction. It is BMW AG’s working head office, and
the view of it from across the road at BMW Welt is the view almost everyone gets.
Visiting
Three things are open to the public on the site and they are separate:
BMW Welt is free to enter. It opened on 17 October 2007 and its primary
function is vehicle handover — BMW describes it as a place where “customers from all over
the world can take delivery of their new car”. It is also where BMW launches things: the
BMW i sub-brand was presented there on 21 February 2011.
The BMW Museum, in the bowl, is ticketed and covers the company’s
history across cars, motorcycles and aero-engines.
The plant tour goes into the working factory. It is the only one of the
three that shows production, and it is the one worth planning around rather than adding on
— particularly during the Neue Klasse transition, when what is on the floor is
changing year to year.
Common questions
Where is BMW’s headquarters?
Petuelring 130 in the Milbertshofen district of Munich, Germany — the four-cylinder
tower, opened on 18 May 1973 and under heritage protection since 29 October 1999.
What is built at the BMW Munich plant?
Most recently the 3 Series and the
i4. Series production of the electric i3 starts in August 2026,
and from 2027 the plant builds all-electric vehicles only.
How old is the BMW Munich plant?
It opened in 1922 and BMW described it in 2026 as “104 years young”. It has been on the
same site throughout — a location that was outside Munich when it was built and is
surrounded by the city now.
How many cars does the Munich plant build?
Around 250,000 a year. During the rebuild for the Neue Klasse, BMW maintained production
of up to 1,000 vehicles a day while a third of the site was reconstructed.
Can you visit the BMW factory in Munich?
Yes. Plant tours go into the working factory; BMW Welt across the road is free to enter;
the BMW Museum is ticketed. The head office tower is not open to visitors.
Why is the BMW headquarters shaped like that?
BMW describes it as an administrative centre “made up of four circular segments”. Four
cylinders in a square is the layout of a four-cylinder engine, which is where the nickname
“Vierzylinder” comes from.
Sources
- BMW Group PressClub — The new BMW Group Plant Munich: the August 2026 start of i3 production, the all-electric plant from 2027, the 650 million euro investment, the 800 robots and 98% automation rate, the 1,000 vehicles a day maintained during the rebuild, and the battery, motor and housing sourcing.
- BMW Group Media Information 03/2016 — 100 years of fascination for mobility (PDF): the opening of the tower and museum on 18 May 1973, the 1972 Olympic Games shell completion, the heritage designation of 29 October 1999, the FIZ opening of 27 April 1990, and the opening of BMW Welt on 17 October 2007.
- Plant code, opening year and output from this site’s Munich plant page.