Biography|Oliver Zipse — The Four-Cylinder Tower Where He Took the Chair

People treat 16 August 2019 as a press date that lived only on a wire.

The job started in this tower.

Petuelring 130 is the BMW Headquarters Karl Schwanzer designed as four cylinders, finished in 1972 and occupied from 1973.

On 16 August 2019 Oliver Zipse became Chairman of the Board of Management of BMW AG here, the day after Harald Krüger left the board.

The appointment itself had been voted twenty-nine days earlier, in a supervisory-board meeting at Plant Spartanburg.

The Munich building is where the title attached to the rooms he already used.

He had been on the management board since 13 May 2015, responsible for production.

The four-cylinder tower is a listed landmark beside Olympiapark, the BMW Museum, and the main Munich plant.

It is not a private office block.

Visitors reach the campus from the Olympiazentrum U-Bahn and from the Dostlerstraße foyer.

The pin is the public headquarters, not a desk on an upper floor.

Zipse had spent his whole career inside this company, from a 1991 trainee intake through Oxford, technical planning, and the production seat.

The chair he took in August 2019 was the first time that path reached the top of the four cylinders.

Photo: BMW Vierzylinder, Munich, 12 October 2014. Julian Herzog, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Portrait: Oliver Zipse, 2018. BMW Group Corporate Communications, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.