Hyperleggera

A Trip to BMW Werk Dingolfing

Paranoia und Verschwörung in Bayern

In Decem­ber 2006, I vis­ited BMW’s Din­golf­ing factory—where the 5, 6 and 7 Series are made, along with the Rolls–Royce Phantom—only to be told of their No Pho­tog­ra­phy policy on site. I had a story to file, so I did what I could: made draw­ings in Cray­ola. All four thou­sand words and twenty-​seven draw­ings are now repub­lished here in English.

Words and Cray­ola: Peter Orosz

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Prologue

It is seven thirty A.M. in a sparsely fur­nished, glass-​walled office on the top floor of BMW’s head­quar­ters in Münich. The office is dom­i­nated by a great big oaken con­fer­ence table. At its head sits a gen­tle­man with his silver hair sharply parted. He is wear­ing a white dress shirt with BMW pro­peller cuf­flinks and a pair of Leder­ho­sen with the BMW emblem embossed in the groin. He is dip­ping Weißwurst into Weißwurstsenf, chew­ing every bite in a mea­sured manner. His name is Dr. Ing. Man­fred von Schaden­freude, com­mu­ni­ca­tions con­sul­tant for life. On the other end of the table squirm two of his under­lings with coffee mugs in hand. The stout one is Alex. He is wear­ing a busi­ness suit and his hair sports unruly curls, while the thin Ralph is dressed in a striped banker’s suit and his hair is cut short. It is dif­fi­cult to dis­cern von Schadenfreude’s face in the low light.

“Grüß Gott boys, let’s hear it.”

“Grüß Gott, Herr Inge­niur!” Alex says to von Schaden­freude and he fol­lows with a quick gulp of coffee. “We have a problem.”

“Cut to the chase, now, cut to the chase,” von Schaden­freude says, and he flicks his tongue at a spot of mus­tard drying on his lips.

“As you must be well aware, Herr Inge­nieur, for three years we have been telling jour­nal­ists vis­it­ing BMW Werk Din­golf­ing that the reason they cannot take pho­tographs here is because 6.9% of our employ­ees are Sioux and accord­ing to their belief system, pho­tog­ra­phy steals one’s soul. Not two months have gone by before snick­ers emerged from the back rows of press con­fer­ences, then the blog­gers started writ­ing it up, and these days I cannot even begin a tour of the plant with­out half the bus­load of jour­nal­ists chuck­ling. We have a team of Hun­gar­i­ans arriv­ing today. A solu­tion must be found.”

Alex splut­ters through his mono­logue then cuts a quick glance at Ralf.

“GOTTVER­DAMMT! Is that the sole reason you have dis­turbed my break­fast? If this was Stal­in­grad, you would now have a hole in your forehead!”

Von Schadenfreude’s voice fills the room. Alex comes very close to drop­ping his coffee mug.

“Herr Inge­nieur, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to…”

“Coher­ently, my son!”

Silent until now, Ralf comes to his rescue:

“He is trying to say that no less has come into peril than the seri­ous­ness of our com­pany. The strict rule of Ordnung.”

“I see! I see! And you couldn’t think of a solution?”

“None,” Alex says.

“Do not worry, my son, we will find one. Ord­nung can handle even dullards like you. Would we ever have reached Stal­in­grad if every knuck­le­head had had the capac­ity to grind our war machine to a halt? Here! Catch!”

He slides a flat, sil­very gadget across the con­fer­ence table. Ralf grabs it and hands it to Alex. The device has a screen, a rub­ber­ized button, and above the screen, a model name: United Random Gen­er­a­tor Works of Bavaria, Excuse Gen­er­a­tor BR–2491, BMW Edition

“Herr Inge­nieur, you think of every­thing!” Alex compliments.

“Press the button, now!”

The Excuse Gen­er­a­tor comes to life:

“Dear vis­i­tors, wel­come to BMW Werk Din­golf­ing! Unfor­tu­nately, the acti­vat­ing mechanism of our auto­mated fire extin­guish­ing system oper­ates on the exact fre­quency of the sensor built into modern dig­i­tal cam­eras. To avoid false alarms, please refrain from taking pho­tographs. This is for your own safety.”

Ralf snuffs a titter.

“Thank you, Herr Inge­nieur! We can handle it from here on!” Alex exclaims.

“Move it boys, move it, don’t be late from Dingolfing!”

Alex and Ralf scurry out of the office. Von Schaden­freude, his face still obscured by the low light as he con­tin­ues his inter­rupted break­fast, mut­ters under his breath:

“You go to war with the Army you have. They’re not the Army you might want or wish to have at a later time.”

Part One: Precise Hoarfrost at Münich Airport

Not thirty min­utes have passed since I have arrived in Ger­many and the words Ord­nung and Obersturmbannführer have already been uttered and nei­ther by me. It is eight A.M., I’m head­ing towards the exit of Münich Air­port with bags under my eyes bor­rowed straight from Horst Tappert.

If all goes smoothly, a bus will pick me up in a few min­utes and fly me straight to BMW’s Din­golf­ing Works, where I will be given coffee and a look into the heart of where Five, Six and Seven Series BMW’s are born.

I step out­side the air­port to study a white Five Series estate.

Before I get any fur­ther than think­ing white is the new cool, the fusion reac­tor hang­ing on the hori­zon nukes both of my reti­nas. Just before I run for cover, I give the car one last squint. Only to real­ize that for the first time in my life I find an estate appeal­ing and, also for the first time in my life, I find one of Chris Bangle’s BMW’s pretty. All of which are dis­turbingly ugly cars.

The double exhaust tips emit white smoke. I lean in for a closer look. It’s very pretty, espe­cially in this unlikely harsh morn­ing light. As if my plane had not landed and we were still cruis­ing at 38,000 feet in thin air.

Some com­pli­ca­tion with the bus is resolved and we set off for Din­golf­ing. The driver is an expres­sion­less, mus­tached Bavar­ian who places the speedome­ter on the one hun­dred kilo­me­ters per hour tick­mark with microm­e­ter pre­ci­sion. Flank­ing the rue­fully Porsche-​less Auto­bahn are hills cov­ered in hoar­frost which melts at the exact line the Sun traces across their flanks.

Slabs of lead hit my eye­lids then.

Intermission

“Ralf, this has got to be the best thing since the Tiger tank. Check this: ‘Dear vis­i­tors, wel­come to BMW Werk Din­golf­ing! Unfor­tu­nately, the light emit­ted by camera flashes inter­feres with our plant’s silver-​painted walls in a way that causes inter­fer­ence with our auto­mated bar­code read­ing system, so please refrain from taking pho­tographs. This is for your and our cus­tomers’ protection.’”

“Haha­ha­haha!”

“No more will we be laughed at! Begin­ning today, every group of vis­it­ing jour­nal­ists will get their custom-​built excuse as to why they cannot take pho­tographs. We shall crush them!”

“Hurry, pick one! I have spot­ted their bus coming in.”

“How about the one with the fire extin­guish­ers, the one we gen­er­ated in von Schadenfreude’s office? That one’s still my favorite.”

“Awe­some. Let’s do it. Alex, is my tie straight?”

Part Two: Buttered Pretzels, Sprawling Logistics

An immensely wide access road takes us to BMW Werk Din­golf­ing. The bus comes to a halt by a vast logis­tics hall. We dis­em­bark and cross the road to enter an office area. A long table is set with a simple, deli­cious break­fast. Stout Bavar­ian pret­zels spread with thick butter, cold orange juice, hot drip coffee with a healthy load of syn­thetic whitener, grapes.

I take a seat to wolf it all down. The thick butter makes the fla­vors bloom. A few min­utes (or a few hours?) later I make my way into a con­fer­ence room, grip­ping my refilled coffee mug. German men in suits are lined up by the pro­jec­tor, I try to remem­ber their names, there is an Alex, a Ralf and maybe a Wolf­gang (but he could be a Rudi for all I know).

(It must be said of Alex that when we was a child, he once dropped a stone on his father’s Leica and he felt no shame.)

Hor­ri­ble Pow­er­Point dia­grams tower over the heads of the jour­nal­ists slowly coming awake. They are filled to the brim with lines and num­bers. Here are some of the numbers:

The Pow­er­Point is wrapped up and Alex men­tions that pho­tog­ra­phy is for­bid­den on the grounds of BMW Werk Dingolfing.

(It must be said of Alex that when he was in kinder­garten, he used the word Canon as a curse.)

He cites some ridicu­lous excuse. That camera flashes inter­fere with the fire extin­guish­ing system. Or some­thing. I could cer­tainly use a smaller camera! I am hold­ing a pocket Nikon, unpleas­antly thick. The lens pro­trudes. I try to bend my palm across its bulk.

We are approach­ing a glass cor­ri­dor which arches over an empty truck lane and we pass an Inter­la­gos Blue M6 coupé. Not an hour and a half has passed since I last felt lust for a Bangle BMW. I also feel lust and lust and more lust. The Bavar­ian air is undoubt­edly thick with hallucinogens.

The Six Series is an unwieldy, lop­sided man­a­tee of a car. With a baf­fling, hump­like behind. Here though, at the bottom of a glass and metal stair­case in M trim, it under­goes a trans­for­ma­tion. Into an object of desire. I yearn into the carbon fiber roof with my eyes in macro and I sniff. It is a won­der­ful machine. It is here to show the work­ers the output of the Byzan­tine machin­ery they serve as cogs. And to make them crave. We go on.

The logis­tics hall is abyssal. Some­thing like four hun­dred by four hun­dred yards. Even Michael John­son would take min­utes to sprint its titanic cir­cum­fer­ence which holds fork­lift oper­a­tors with han­dle­bar mus­taches and a sea of boxes in order. They ship BMW parts to every corner of the world here, from screws to carbon fiber hoods. Boxes line the hall with des­ti­na­tion tags on their sides in stacks which tower fifty feet high.

“We don’t keep the parts for Rolls–Royces here yet but even­tu­ally we will,” Alex, our leader says, then he flashes a sar­donic grin. The lens on his cell phone camera is cov­ered by a red sticker. I imag­ine a British vet­eran of World War Two with shrap­nel in his hip bone as he reads the news about Rover’s bank­ruptcy and then his old Jaguar dies. I smile too. Can a man stand in the way of Vorsprung?

(It must be said of Alex that his father took part in Germany’s inva­sion of France in 1940, and at the Mag­inot Line he shot and killed the great-great-grandson of Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre with his ser­vice Mauser.)

Num­bers again, lovely, creepy num­bers. Two hun­dred and thirty fork­lifts. Four hun­dred and thirty thou­sand recy­clable con­tain­ers. We arrive at a stack of boxes held to a pallet with heavy duty plas­tic roping. The pal­lets are ready for imme­di­ate load­ing into cargo 747’s to reach any loca­tion on the globe in 72 hours. The clock is tick­ing! Three cargo trans­port 747’s leave Münich every single day.

An hour has passed and we have cov­ered but half of the logis­tics hall. We reemerge into the razor blade Bavar­ian winter sun.

Intermission

“HAVE YOU NO EYES? HAVE YOU NO EYES AT ALL?”

Alex stands with his eyes down in front of a flat screen in a win­dow­less con­fer­ence room of BMW Werk Din­golf­ing. The screen is filled with the face of Man­fred von Schaden­freude, twist­ing with rage. He must have a light directly on his face because it is hard to make out any of his fea­tures, save for his snarling teeth and his sharp mus­tache. Stand­ing behind Alex is Ralf, exam­in­ing the shiny tips of his shoes with great interest.

“Herr Inge­nieur, who would have thought? That a disheveled, dreamy giraffe of a kid will not be scared into sub­mis­sion by our directives?”

“HE WAS PHO­TOGRAPH­ING THE ROOF OF THE M6 RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU! IN MACRO MODE! IN MACRO MODE! I SHALL STRAN­GLE YOUR WIFE WITH THE STRAPS OF MY LEDER­HO­SEN! AND YOUR KIDS! BOTH OF THEM!”

“Herr Inge­nieur, I shall have it con­fis­cated from him as they go to lunch.”

“Gottver­dammt, lunch! Hurry, you will be missed. But do not for a moment think you’ve gotten away with this! Once these steppe scum have left, you come to my office.”

“Yes sir, Herr Inge­nieur, sir.”

The flat screen goes dark. Alex strides out of the con­fer­ence room as Ralf sinks into a chair and stays there. On his way to the dining area, Alex presses the single button on the BR-2491 Excuse Generator.

“Dear vis­i­tors, wel­come to the Rolls–Royce chas­sis assem­bly plant at BMW Werk Din­golf­ing! Unfor­tu­nately, the spec­trum emit­ted by the focus assist light on dig­i­tal cam­eras induces cor­ro­sive processes in the highly expen­sive Rolls–Royce Phan­tom chas­sis, so please refrain from taking photographs.”

Part Three: Lunch at BMW and the Glorious Place Where Rolls–Royces Are Made

I wouldn’t call it Bavar­ian but it is rich and tasty.

We begin with a good bowl of soup and German breads, fol­lowed by chicken, veg­eta­bles and col­or­ful fruit. The meal forms a charm­ing arc. And all this at the can­teen of a car fac­tory! Alex sits at the head of the table and tells sto­ries about the plant’s history.

(It must be said of Alex that he showed up for his school photo in the sev­enth grade with a black bag on his head.)

This is agri­cul­tural coun­try. They still have work­ers here who go home to work their pieces of land after their morn­ing shift at the plant. A healthy union of indus­try and agri­cul­ture! I think, then reach for a slice of fresh pineapple.

Magic will now follow. Syn­thetic magic at that, noth­ing but a well-​crafted illu­sion, a copy to put the orig­i­nal to shame, but magic nev­er­the­less. The first sign of said magic is that our bus brakes, we emerge, and by the door is a car-​shaped object the size of a Star Destroyer, cov­ered with a blue tarp.

“Okay, we are head­ing into the Rolls–Royce chas­sis assem­bly plant now. I would like to ask all of you to please refrain from taking pho­tographs,” Alex says and fol­lows with a lengthy excuse while I prac­tice one-​handed exposure.

(It must be said of Alex that he is BMW’s sole employee who has never been pho­tographed for the com­pany newsletter.)

The lens can just about poke through the gap between my index and middle fin­gers. We enter.

Slabs of alu­minum the size of barns stand in lines. And these are but the C-pillars! We move past the slabs and I walk by an alu­minum frame­work as big as an assem­bly hall only to real­ize I’ve just passed a Rolls. The ethe­real exoskele­ton of a Phantom.

The effect is shock­ing. It is suf­fo­cat­ing. The sur­re­al­ity of the scene is enhanced by the ear­ringed, mus­tached, straw­berry blond mul­leted work­ers who bustle about. One would expect a moldy, creak­ing British work­shop with mist swirling by one’s feet, not a well-​lit hall. It is more com­pli­cated than that, of course, because here, too, the cars are hand­made. With Bavar­ian hands.

The chas­sis is made of huge beams of alu­minum which are nev­er­the­less tran­quil and they sur­round clip­per sails of alu­minum pan­el­ing. The Phan­tom is not a car. It is not even a boat. It is a place. Not a cap­sule, a bubble enclos­ing the human body’s every con­tour down to the mil­lime­ter, but a place. It has a hori­zon, par­al­lels which meet in infin­ity, it has non-​Euclidean geom­e­try. To com­pare it with the human body would be to com­pare a flu virus with the Horse­head Nebula. It is a cave whose ceil­ing cannot be lit by even the most pow­er­ful flood­light. One can be swal­lowed in the space behind those C-pillars to plan wars, to describe worlds, to cross time and space incom­pre­hen­si­ble to the human eye.

The Phan­tom makes you irrel­e­vant. Two work­ers smooth the weld line between the roof and the body behind a glass door, using reflected light to spot imper­fec­tions, then they polish it some more. This is what costs such gar­gan­tuan sums, this com­pul­sive pur­suit of per­fec­tion. That dozens of people like them pour thou­sands of work­ing hours into every single car, people who need homes, food and education.

And just where is the British char­ac­ter of the car? Maybe they’ll install it when they ship the chas­sis to Britain for final assem­bly. And does a German car have soul? I do not have a clue! I reach down and sweep a small pile of alu­minum shav­ings into my palms which have been drilled out of a Phantom’s side by a robotic drill. They glow! They sparkle! They cut like the razor blades of the Bavar­ian sun in December.

Intermission

“Agnes, how do you do! I’ve heard you’ll drop in by our Münich head­quar­ters tomorrow.”

Even as heard through a cell phone’s tinny speaker, the voice of Man­fred von Schaden­freude is impos­ing. Agnes, head of BMW Hungary’s PR, is respon­si­ble for han­dling the jour­nal­ists from Hun­gary. She is talk­ing on her cell phone a few feet away from the jour­nal­ists, who—drunk on Rolls–Royce—do not pay any atten­tion to her conversation.

“Look, Agnes, you’re a smart woman. Obvi­ously, you will want to visit us tomor­row as an employee, not as a guest.”

“Of course, Herr Ingenieur.”

“Oh please! Call me Manny.”

“All right…Manny.”

“See? Easy as pie! So go and take that lanky kid’s camera. Alex is a dullard, he does not have the sense to use our BR–2491 Excuse Gen­er­a­tor with style, but you have no need for such prim­i­tive tools. I see you’re on good terms with the boy. You surely can figure out how to handle this.”

“Herr Ing…I mean, Manny, trust me I can handle him.”

“All right then. Soon there will be an open­ing in upper man­age­ment here at com­pany HQ. But I’ll tell you all about that tomor­row! Do not let me down.”

The tele­phone goes silent. Agnes rejoins the jour­nal­ists. Stand­ing nearby, Alex is fid­dling with the button on the BR–2491 Excuse Generator.

Part Four: Fire Truck, Factory, Sunset

I am look­ing at the world through a palm-​sized LCD. Com­pos­ing a pic­ture of a fire engine red BMW 3 Series turned into a fire engine—to the side, a bit to the bottom—, I hear a sharp call.

“Peter! Please come over here.”

It is Agnes, our guide from BMW Hungary.

“Look, please don’t take pic­tures. They told you. These guys are Ger­mans, their lives are gov­erned by Ord­nung. You will not be able to con­vince them that all you want to do is take a photo of a fire engine because you like how it looks. Give me your camera.”

Grind­ing my teeth, I hand it over. I fake a sorry to Alex.

(It must be said of Alex that when he was twelve, he extracted the lens ele­ments from his uncle’s 500 mm Minolta tele­photo lens and used them as skip­ping stones on the pond by their house.)

Am I going to sell my photos to Konkur­rent C? Or is every­one employed here a Sioux who fears for the theft of his soul by camera? What a baf­fling place! And just think: they fly me to a fac­tory where I can’t take pho­tographs and then they tell me to use the press CD which shall be pro­vided. The Bavar­ian soul is tor­tu­ous like the Auto­bahn around Münich. We dive into the last phase of our fac­tory visit.

The Pressing Plant

An auto­mated machine press the size of an ice­berg stands in the middle, its thundering-​scraping sound fills the air, you can only scream and flail your arms in wonder. Big noisy machine! Big noisy machine! A little oil is trick­ling from its side, I step into it so my sneak­ers can leave a track of machine oil. Roofs of Five Series exit the machine press through a hole in its side.

The Welding Plant

Beau­ti­ful orange KUKA robots do pirou­ettes and swap heads mid­se­quence to reach into every part of a chas­sis. But who makes the robots? And who makes the machine presses? Robot-​making robots? And who makes them, robot-​making robot-​making robots? Is there a human at the end of the line? Is his name Dsuang Dsi?

BMW Seven Series fly over­head like monarch but­ter­flies on their way to Mexico to over­win­ter. Every one of them will cost more money than what most humans will earn in their life­times. And com­pared to the Phan­tom, they are noth­ing but mass-​produced con­sum­ables, prod­ucts to be later discarded.

The Painting Plant

Twi­light. Color sam­ples on shiny discs line the walls. Robots open car doors, look inside, spray paint, close the doors to leave. A new Six Series glides by as we advance to the assem­bly plant.

“And now,” Alex says as he whis­tles the Bridal Chorus from Lohen­grin, “the mar­riage. When the tops and the bot­toms of the cars unite. Every­thing in the right order, accord­ing to our cur­rent orders.”

(It must be said of Alex that the reason why there are no photos of his par­ents’ wed­ding is that Alex stuffed a marzi­pan angel into the viewfinder of the photographer’s Has­sel­blad at the begin­ning of the ceremony.)

Mighty cross-​drilled brake disks below a V10 engine emerge on the assem­bly line, fol­lowed by a prop­shaft, a dif­fer­en­tial and the rear sus­pen­sion. A pearles­cent white body of an M6 glides down from over­head, four men grab its nose, per­form move­ments refined by thou­sands of rep­e­ti­tions, then another four men take over. At last they step back.

A new M6 is born.

A sticker on its side says US. It is going to the United States of Amer­ica, where some­one will pay a hun­dred thou­sand dol­lars to own it.

I look out the window at the park­ing lot. The sun is edging toward the hori­zon, its rays glint­ing off the twenty exhaust tips of five M6’s. The air is grow­ing cold. Out­side, in the light turn­ing from yellow to blue, grand tour­ers with carbon fiber tops wait for their con­tain­ers to deliver auto­mo­tive rap­ture to a select few. To Japan, to Amer­ica, to the Nether­lands Antilles. In 72 hours, to any­where in the world.

I walk down­stairs and get on the bus. Alex waves good­bye. We head for the air­port. I sit in the front and stretch my legs, look­ing for Lam­borgh­i­nis from the direc­tion of Italy. In the dis­tance, the cool­ing tower of a power plant is giving off mounds of steam. The light is now only a narrow line between the gray sky and the gray road sur­face. I could be any­where, on the East Coast, say, or in the Deep South, Ten­nessee, for instance, the world is four lanes of asphalt with cars on top, and if there were semi­trail­ers as well, their lights would glow like Christ­mas trees.

The sun dips below the hori­zon. We arrive at the airport.

Epilogue

Run­ning across the air­port I am going to drop my Power­book because I had no time to tuck it back into my back­pack, no, my tooth­paste has still not turned into a nuclear bomb and nei­ther has my com­puter, I speed down the moving walk­way, my speed rel­a­tive to the wall is giddy and my mus­cles bleed lactic acid, it is drag­ging me down, my lungs are nitro­cel­lu­lose on fire but still I run.

But what if I were to miss my flight? Per­chance I could make my way back to the Din­golf­ing plant where some­body would say, hey, here’s a couple of M6’s bound for Hun­gary, wanna take them home? I would be riding shot­gun, lay my head against the side and con­sider the rec­og­niz­abil­ity of super­cars at 155 MPH. We would scream east­ward, cross the moun­tains on switch­back roads, it would take only a few hours, the M6 is light and press­ing the appro­pri­ate but­tons endows it with 507 horse­power. Does its noise, over time, become like that of a Formula–1 race car?

I run some more, swing up from my hypoxic thresh­old and now the grip on the neo­prene casing of my Power­book is firmer, my steps more springy. I no longer need a moving walk­way to attain great speed. I pass a well-​groomed elderly gen­tle­man who is sizing me up above his sharp mus­tache. Not slow­ing down, I steal a glance back at him, but he is now tap­ping away at a tiny PDA. His Leder­ho­sen rule.

“Good evening, Mr. Orosz. Have a pleas­ant flight,” and I can’t feel any­thing now, only the purr of jet engines and the sudden accel­er­a­tion on the runway.

I think of the chrome-​tipped exhausts of M6’s and the arc of their Inter­la­gos Blue doorsteps.

One is right under­neath, gob­bling up the Auto­bahn. The icy wind screams along its roofline.

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This was orig­i­nally pub­lished in Hun­gar­ian by Total­car and was fol­lowed the next day by a clean ver­sion, with no men­tion of Dr. Ing. Man­fred von Schadenfreude.

∞ Published on Thursday, February 5th, 2009

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