Essen Motor Show 2022 takes place from 3-11 December. As in every other year, the visitors can vote for their favourite wheel in the associated World Wheel Award 2023. The awards see wheel manufacturers with the most votes make it to the final round which is an online voting at VAU-MAX.de. There, “the most beautiful and elegant wheel” becomes the winner of the World Wheel Award 2023.
Following its acquisition by KW automotive in June 2021, wheel manufacturer BBS is making a comeback with an innovation that ensures its wheels are compatible with a broad range of vehicles. Unveiling this addition to the BBS portfolio at The Tire Cologne, managing director Klaus Wohlfarth stated that BBS Unlimited represents a “very large promise.”
Wheel manufacturer BBS Japan has signed a four-year contract with Formula 1 to become the exclusive supplier of new standard rims. The company, part of the Maedakosen Group, has also signed up to supply rims to NASCAR for the next three years.
Wheel manufacturer BBS intends to gradually withdraw from the original equipment segment and concentrate on aftermarket business. This decision was announced by Stefan Prutscher, regional secretary of the IG Metall trade union. According to the union, BBS will cut 160 jobs at its Schiltach and Herbolzheim sites in Germany. The wheel manufacturer, which filed for bankruptcy for the third time in summer 2020, will retain 280 jobs.
KW automotive GmbH intends to acquire wheel manufacturer BBS, and signed a contract to this end late last year. The deal is still subject to a number of contractual conditions that should be met in the near future. The company anticipates taking over the BBS brand in June 2021 together with a minority shareholder, entrepreneur Mathias R. Albert. The parties have agreed not to disclose the purchase price.
BBS’s provisional administrator, Thomas Oberle, as provisional insolvency administrator, has clarified that there are not “structural problems” at the firms two plants in Schiltach and Herbolzheim. And therefore, that was not the reason for the well-known wheel brand’s recent insolvency our German group publication Reifenpresse.de reported.
Wheel manufacturer BBS applied for bankruptcy protection at the district court in Rottweil, Germany on Monday 13 July 2020. It is the third time in the past 15 years BBS has done so. There were also bankruptcies in 2007 and 2011, our German group publication Neue ReifenZeitung (reifenpresse.de) reported.
While production has now resumed at BBS’s Schiltach and Herbolzheim wheel plants, the crisis and the wheel manufacturer’s adapted 50th-anniversary celebrations have given Markus Wartosch a tricky start as the newly appointed global head of sales and marketing at BBS. He is supported in this role by Erwin Eigel, who continues as Head of the IAM division at BBS.
Alloy rim manufacturer BBS claims to have “reinterpreted the Y-spoke” pattern with its new XR design. The XR goes on sale this autumn in 18-inch sizes and a platinum silver gloss finish; BBS says 19-inch sizes and a diamond-turned finish are currently in preparation.
Donghyun Jin has always been a big city lad, but of late he’s downsized. From Seoul and its population of ten million to a village of 3,850 in Germany’s Black Forest. Donghyun Jin, senior director of the Manufacturing division at NICE Holdings (majority shareholder of the BBS Group since 2015) arrived in the village of Schiltach as interim chief executive officer of BBS in order to navigate the alloy wheel manufacturer through the turbulent waters of Dieselgate and the introduction of WLTP.
Wheel manufacturer BBS says it is “strategically repositioning” itself, and has thus made a number of changes to its management team. Heinz Bartosch, chief executive officer since December 2016, was “released from his duties” as of 2 November 2018. He has been replaced with a new management team, a team that BBS says will “place a stronger focus” on expanding the BBS brand around the globe as well as on growing the company’s partnerships with OEM customers in the premium segment.
The winner of the BBS design contest has been announced, with the first prize of €10,000 prize going to two brothers. The creative minds behind the ‘Spoked wheel of today’ design are Davide and Dario Dornauer, who respectively study product design at the Bauhaus University in Weimar, Germany and Automotive Engineering at the Cologne University of Technology. They were chosen from a total of 103 applications were received from 27 German universities and 20 design submissions.
Wheel manufacturer BBS will introduce a new alloy rim designed for the Porsche 991 GT3 at next week’s Reifen fair in Germany. The BBS CH-R is available as a 20-inch fitment and will be on display at the company’s show stand (Hall 2.0, Stand 2D20) along with other rims, including the FI-R and CH-R ‘Nürburgring Edition’, and the new BBS aluminium wheel display stand for dealers.
BBS is launching a Porsche-specific 20-inch, centre lock version of its CH-R design. The “Nürburgring Edition” of the CH-R wheel will be available in 18, 19 and 20-inch sizes for a wide variety of vehicles.
An investor consortium led by Austrian industrial holding Tyrol Equity AG has signed an agreement to sell a majority stake in German high performance alloy wheel manufacturer BBS GmbH to Korea Exchange listed industrial group Nice Holdings. The parties have declined to disclose the transaction value, and the deal is subject to relevant regulatory approvals. The transaction is expected to be completed within the coming months.
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