Mobile Tradition live - BMW Car Club Brasil

The first BMW six-cylinder model
served as a bracket for the
front transverse leaf spring.
The sections of the side
members, moreover, tapered
towards the rear since lower
bending moments came into
play here. Such a lightweight,
low-slung frame, boasting
exceptional torsional rigidity
into the bargain, naturally
offered considerable advantages
compared with the
heavy U-profile frame in common
use at the time, and BMW
Munich filed for a patent on
this design on 28th January
1933. Particular attention was
also devoted to the wheel suspensions in
the design of this new car following open
criticism of this crucial aspect in connec-
tion with the previous 3/20 PS and 3/15
PS models.
At the front, a new swing axle with
low wishbones and hydraulic dampers
ensured precise control and stability of
the steered wheels, while the rear featured
the tried and tested principle of a
rigid axle with quarter-elliptic leaf springs
and lever-type shock absorbers. Initial
The latest BMW models at the 1933 Berlin Motor Show.
Page 10
A front end that defines BMW cars to this day: the “kidney grille”.
drive tests in 1932 confirmed that the
new car bearing the development code
303 and with a weight-output ratio of 27
The first radiator to feature the “BMW kidney grille”, and a raft of technical
innovations which inspired numerous future developments.
kg per brake horsepower was not just
lively but also boasted positively safe and
far from uncomfortable ride characteristics.
The first “BMW kidney grille”
The 30 bhp 1.2-litre engine with twin
carburettors – the smallest six-cylinder in
Germany at the time – was as powerful
as it was flexible and smoothrunning.
In its bodywork
design, too, BMW struck out on
new paths, and this model
came to define the BMW look
for cars of that decade – and
beyond to the present in one
particular detail.
The body stylists designed
a significantly more spacious
superstructure for the new car,
which claimed an overall
increase in length of 70 cm. In
its advertisements BMW still
described the model 303 as a
small car, but they were clearly
well on the way to leaving this
humble category behind.
The bodywork designers at BMW
had lent the radiator cowling on the new
model a particularly
striking design. The
large air intake on the
front of the car was
divided into two areas
clearly separated by a
bar and at an angle to
one another. They were faintly reminiscent
of two adjacent kidneys familiar
from schematic illustrations of the inner
organs of the human body. No other
leading car manufacturer employed such
a radiator design at the time, and the
“kidney grille” became a distinctive identifying
feature of BMW cars, remaining
so to this day with very few exceptions.
It was only later that the story
evolved of the Bruchsal-based manufacturers
of small roadster bodies, Gebrüder
Ihle, having developed and “invented”
this design for their sports car bodies fitted
onto the Dixi and BMW 3/15 PS
chassis. Evidence shows, however, that
Ihle only began offering bodywork with
“kidney grilles” from 1935, having previously
used the unitary flat radiators in
common use. Ihle had adopted this striking
design from BMW rather than the
other way around.
Phaeton by special order
In February 1933, BMW was able to
present the first examples of the new
303 model at the Berlin Motor Show. The
superstructures for the saloon had been
built at the Sindelfingen workshops of
Daimler-Benz, who had already signed a
cooperative deal with BMW for the con-