BMW has touted themselves as “The Ultimate Driving Machine” for decades. But do you know the real origin story? The term was coined in 1974 – now over 50 years ago – and has proven to be uncannily enduring. The tagline helped propel BMW to the forefront of their segment throughout the 1980s and further established the brand’s reputation apart from competitors like Jaguar and Mercedes. Today, it’s difficult to imagine a world without it.
How The Ultimate Driving Machine Came to Life
The now inescapable slogan sprang to life out of a need for BMW to define itself, as a brand, to customers. Bob Lutz, a board member for sales at the time, had recognized there was simply no universal positioning for the brand. Dealerships, distributors, and nearly everyone in between had their own ad agencies and marketing ploys, leading to a completely disjointed presentation of the brand. Nevertheless, BMW was still a strong brand – largely, Lutz has speculated, due to its warm reception by car magazines of the day.
Then it came for BMW of North America to launch, splitting BMW’s longstanding distribution contract with Max Hoffman. Max, if you didn’t know, was practically the sole US distributor for BMW between 1962 and 1975. BMW looked for US ad agencies to jumpstart BMW NA – among them, Ammirati & Puris (then Ammirati, Puris, AvRutnick). That firm included eponymous partner Martin Puris, the original writer of the “the Ultimate Driving Machine” ad. BMW loved that it spoke so heavily to performance. That was, after all, largely the only reason they were moving any metal at the time at all.
The tagline debuted in 1975 after BMW took a win at Sebring. That’s a natural place to present a slogan that shouts your brand’s performance from the rooftops, and likely is another contributing factor to the phrase’s enduring nature. Sales escalated steadily; BMW sold 15,000 cars in the US in 1974. They cracked 100,000 just over a decade later.
Pit Stop For “Joy”
Memorably – or maybe not-so-memorably – BMW did sway from the Ultimate Driving Machine tagline in 2009. They switched over to simply “Joy,” which was also tied into the “Efficient Dynamics” branding that begun around the same time. “Joy” resurfaces from time to time in corporate communications, but more enduring is “Freude auf Fahren,” or “Sheer Driving Pleasure” as it’s known in America. The latter has more or less run concurrently with “the Ultimate Driving Machine,” in fact just slightly predating it.
The campaign worked then, and we tend to think it’s still working today. After all, why else would they use it. Martin Puris perhaps summarizes it best. “If they produce true BMWs, they can use the line forever.” It looks like that’s the plan.
