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Legendary BMW Engineer Passes Away

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If you love the engineering and design behind your BMW vehicle, it’s very likely that it’s thanks to the hard work of BMW engineer Paul Rosche. Mr. Rosche served the German automaker for 42 years, from 1957-1999. From motorsports to the production line, his touch is in almost every part of the company.


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Rosche first joined BMW in the late 1950s when he graduated from school, and by the late 1960s he completed development on a 2.0-liter turbo engine that went on to win the European Touring Car Championship. In the early 1970s, his brilliance moved to the production car side of the business. Rosche earned a promotion to the head of design for BMW M1 production vehicle, but even after that he came back to motorsports, modifying production engines into racing beasts that brought home trophies to fill the BMW case.

Before he retired from BMW in 1999, Rosche helped develop the race-ready engine for the performance production BMW M3, reportedly the most successful touring car the world has ever seen, and led BMW’s Formula One team to a manufacturer win for the second team.


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BMW Motorsport Director Jens Marquardt said “Paul Rosche not only represented and characterized the company and the BMW brand with his passion, his vision and his immense technical expertise over many decades in action on the racetrack… The loss of Paul Rosche is a loss of an outstanding personality for BMW Motorsport and BMW M.”

The next time you get behind the wheel of your BMW vehicle, send a silent thought of thanks to Paul Rosche. It’s impossible to know where BMW would be without this iconic engineer and his vision for automotive performance.