One of BMW's pre-World War II factories was located in Eisenach. After April 1945, the plant was initially occupied by American forces, but by July 1945, it fell within the Soviet occupation zone as agreed by the allies. The tooling for BMW's manufacturing facility had been hidden in nearby mines during the war. Initially, the plant focused on making items like cooking pots and wheelbarrows. However, surviving workers returning from the war recommenced automobile production on a small scale, using pre-war designs and existing parts. Albert Seidler, in charge of motor bike production, presented a newly assembled BMW 321 to Marshal Georgy Zhukov. Impressed, the Soviets agreed to halt dismantling the plant if workers could assemble five more cars in one week. Zhukov issued order no. 93 in October 1945, agreeing to have finished cars sent to the Soviet Union as part of reparations instead of dismantling the plant. Ten cars and 23 motorcycles were completed that month. The plant then passed under the control of "Sowjetische AG Maschinenbau Awtowelo," a Soviet-directed holding company focused on vehicle production.
Initial production was reserved for Soviet and government use, with civilian and commercial exports beginning in 1948. The factory continued producing cars and motorcycles under the BMW brand. However, a 1952 lawsuit forced them to change the name to EMW. The logotype retained the quartered roundel but used red, representing the Communist red flag, in place of BMW's blue, which represented the flag of Bavaria. The name EMW stands for Eisenacher Motorenwerk, as opposed to Bayerische Motorenwerke.
The Kasernierte Volkspolizei and, subsequently, the East German armed forces sought to revive production of the BMW 325, an unsuccessful wartime off-road military light utility vehicle built by BMW in Eisenach. EMW developed this into the EMW 325/3, of which 166 units were built in 1952. This remilitarization drew protests from the West on the grounds that it violated the terms of the Potsdam Conference.
The EMW 340 was a former BMW model. The BMW plant Eisenach developed an extensive facelift for the 1938 BMW 321 model. The headlights were included in the fenders, and the grille was designed to appear wider. The car received an actual boot lid, with the spare tire placed inside rather than behind it, and the bonnet opened in its entirety. The engine and drivetrain remained largely unchanged: a 2.0-liter straight-six four-stroke engine with 51 bhp and a four-speed manual transmission, though the gear stick moved from the floor to the steering column. Production started in November 1945 with a demanded volume of 3000 saloons and 3000 BMW R35 motorcycles as repair services for the Soviet Union. As factories producing parts were in West Germany, local production of parts became necessary, leading to less than perfect quality and supply shortages. In 1950, BMW Munich filed a lawsuit against Avtovelo, the owner of BMW Eisenach, threatening sanctions if Eisenach continued producing BMWs. A legal loophole allowed Eisenach to continue production, but the logo was changed to a red-white badge, and the car was renamed the EMW 340. Cars exported to other Socialist countries, however, still wore BMW badges. Production of the EMW 340 ended in 1955 after 21,000 units were produced, of which 19,000 were exported.
EMW entered the 1953 German Grand Prix, which was a round of the Formula One World Championship. The EMW 340 car retired after 12 laps with exhaust problems. The Constructors' Championship was not awarded until 1958.
The automobile section of EMW subsequently became VEB Automobilwerk Eisenach and went on to produce the Wartburg. Motorcycle manufacture ceased in the 1950s; production was replaced by the AWO 425, built by Simson at Suhl. The Eisenach factory, then part of the IFA (Industrieverband Fahrzeugbau), continued production with IFA F9s for one year until switching to Eisenach's own development, the Wartburg 311. The name EMW was never used again as an automotive brand, but the factory was in use until 1991. The original Eisenacher Motorenwerk still has a museum.
This article is based solely on the supplied corpus. No external sources were consulted; claims that could not be substantiated against the corpus were omitted under the drop-the-claim rule.
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