New York Times reporter Stephen Williams was surprised when his tour guide at the BMW Museum in Munich told him the BMW roundel logo has never had a thing to do with airplane propellers. Instead, she said, the logo was meant to show the colors of the free state of Bavaria.

This revelation contradicted everything the American media has ever been told about the roundel, often described as a spinning propeller set against a blue sky. Supposedly, it's a tribute to BMW's days of building airplane engines (though almost every European manufacturer built planes, or parts of planes, during W.W. II). When he returned the U.S., Williams learned that BMW's U.S. public relations staff even has a history book that repeats this association with aircraft.

But it's myth.

Apparently, the BMW roundel dates to 1917. Its quadrants show the blue and white colors of Bavaria, but the order was reversed on the actual logo because it was evidently illegal to use national symbols for a commercial trademark. The incorrect association with airplanes is thought to have come from a 1929 ad that showed the roundel in the rotating propeller of an plane.

New York Times, 318ti.org