Bimmer is an informal word to refer to automobiles from the German brand BMW. It is a simplified form, originated from the pronunciation of the brand by the Americans. There are no official notes on the emergence of the term. However, there are some versions.
In English, the acronym BMW is read as [bi: ém: dabliu], however, the abbreviation for just BM [bi: ém] is very frequent.
One of the versions states that the formation of the word "bimmer" was made using the pronunciation of the initials BM and adding the ending "er". This is because BMW car models have the ending "er" in the original name of each series, for example: Dreier (Series 3), Siebener (Series 7) etc. In German, "drei" means "three" and "sieben" means "seven".
In another version, the word "bimmer" was created to differentiate cars from BMW motorcycles, commonly referred to as "beemer".
beemer is a homophone word (with a similar pronunciation) that has been around for many years, since the popularity of the British BSA motorcycles that the owners designated as "
beezers". BMW motorcycle owners began to pronounce "beemer" to differentiate the brands.Initially, the term "beemer" was used for both motorcycles and BMW cars. Maybe for the sake of status, there is now a clear distinction between cars (bimmer) and motorcycles (beemer).
Confusing the terms can be an offense to an owner and big fan of powerful BMW cars.
