Daimler-Benz Buys BMW in 1959

By the late-1950s BMW found itself in a tricky position, their luxury cars weren't selling in large enough numbers, their bubble cars were popular but profits per vehicle were tiny, meaning that the company was heavily in debt and losing money. The car that would eventually help turn things around, the 700, had just entered production in August but that would take time. Things were so bad that the company was seriously considering bankruptcy, which prompted Daimler-Benz to make an offer to buy the company - the idea was that BMW would build car bodies for Daimler-Benz, that the head of the management board presented to the board as the only viable option other than bankruptcy. At a meeting in December the board almost voted to accept the offer with a few hold-outs only just managing to delay the vote until the following meeting, one of them being Herbert Quandt. Quandt, who had originally been in favour of the deal, against all financial advice started buying up shares in BMW until he owned more than half and the rest is history.

So what happens in Quandt doesn't have a change of heart and the board of BMW votes through the takeover offer? Some of the people working in research and design will likely transfer over but since Daimler-Benz already has a full complement they'll have to fight for a spot so you won't see a straight cross over. Daimler-Benz might continue production of the 700, albeit at their own plants, if they see that it's popular but that's no guarantee of a New Class appearing. Who takes over BMW's place in the market? I honestly don't know enough about the German, or European, automotive industry of the period to guess.
 

Archibald

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In my mind Daimler-Benz = Mercedes. When did the two fused ? a mixture of Mercedes and BMW can't make a bad car, the DNA just screams "super cars".
this would have massive butterflies on Formula One history after 1980 (BMW powered Nelson Piquet Brabham that won both the championship in 1983 and beyond.)
 
I come at this far more obliquely, pondering a surviving Kaiserreich, assuming butterflies do not wash away things, for my BMW had at its core the engine business, similar to how Honda was an engine maker that developed into building things that used its engines, so here BMW spins off the car auto manufacturing and focuses on the core, BMW the engine maker survives, BMW the car maker gets absorbed. In my world I have BMW becoming something akin to Pratt-Whitney, modern day the number two German jet engine maker, more focused on military applications and turbines for helicopters too (Jumo becomes more like General Electric). So my BMW is a major "power" systems maker with subsidiaries all over high performance internal combustion and turbine/fan jet engine products. For me I had Auto-Union take over its car business to better augment the mid-range and Horch is the luxury rival to Mercedes. And then I strengthened the bonds between stronger surviving French, Italian and British makers that we saw interwar and disrupted by WWII (without that I have more mixes like modern GM/Izuzu or Ford/Mazda for the Europeans). I have Germany still heavy in luxury but a better lower end geared for export with a tighter middle since I give Germany better railroads to compete. All that gets way from your query but perhaps it sparks more thought on where Germany's auto industry might have gone with a differing luxury and middle market set of actors?
 
In such a scenario BMW under Mercedes-Benz would be competing with in-house rival DKW / Audi (prior to the latter later being sold to Volkswagen), even the DKW F102 / Audi F103 was originally conceived as the Mercedes-Benz W118 though cannot really see Mercedes-Benz wanting to move downmarket themselves.

So either both DKW / Audi and BMW are canned or one of the two marques ends up surviving below Mercedes-Benz as the latter's downmarket proxy. Despite Mercedes developing what became the DKW F102, DKW / Audi preferred to stick with 2-stroke engines as it's unique selling point notwithstanding the declining sales of 2-stroke cars.

BMW meanwhile would have been significantly less stubborn compared to DKW / Audi and would have definitely promoted both the New Class and 02 Series models as well as maybe even a front-engined RWD 4-cylinder replacement for the BMW 700 below the 02 Series (think more potent upmarket 1300-1600cc Opel Kadett A / Vauxhall Viva HA), the BMW M10 engine was originally conceived as a 900cc (or 800-900cc unit depending on the source) unit before growing to 1.3 and later 1.5 displacements. Additionally BMW's then Planning Director Helmet Werner Bönsch even looked at spawning a small family 1.2-2.0 Inline-6s derived from the 900cc 4-cylinder engine (akin to the pre-war BMW 303).

Not sure which other German carmakers are likely to take BMW's place on the market as they would likely entail earlier PODs, NSU would have to follow Mazda's example in producing Wankel powered sportscars (perhaps jointly-developed with Citroen with a joint rear mid-engined RWD / front mid-engined FWD platform) until the Wankel engine is reliable enough to be used in more mainstream cars like the OTL Ro80 and even then they might end up being swallowed up by other carmaker.

Borgward would either go under as in OTL or ended being bought by Chrysler or BMC. Glas would have no one to save them from their financial problems outside of Mercedes-Benz or another carmaker. A merger of Steyr-Daimler-Puch (aka Steyr-Puch) and Neckar (formerly NSU-Fiat) might potentially work in an early post-war POD to become a German equivalent of Simca (especially if a rump Austria becomes part of West Germany) though the resultant Steyr-Neckar would again be too small to survive without becoming part of another carmaker.

It is possible that Volkswagen might take BMW's place by continuing to work with Porsche on projects such as the Volkswagen EA128, Volkswagen EA266 (plus related sportscar models) and a Volkswagen version of the OTL Porsche 924 (albeit with the 2.5-3.0 4-cylinder Porsche unit, early VR6 or another Porsche designed engine) sans any Porsche badged equivalent though that would be a very risky strategy on Volkswagen's part to not switch to front-engine FWD / RWD layouts (outside of the Volkswagen-Porsche 924).

Might be the case that Volkswagen still ends up acquiring both DKW / Audi and NSU as in OTL or acquires a more successful version of NSU sometime down the line.
 
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In my mind Daimler-Benz = Mercedes. When did the two fused ? a mixture of Mercedes and BMW can't make a bad car, the DNA just screams "super cars".
this would have massive butterflies on Formula One history after 1980 (BMW powered Nelson Piquet Brabham that won both the championship in 1983 and beyond.)
Mercedes was the name of the daughter of Daimler or Benz (I forget which), and her name was given to one of their car lines. (Like Ford tried to do with Edsel, later).
 
Funny thing, by mid '60s, BMW was in good enough shape to buy out Hans Glas' car factory in Dingolfing.
 
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