The 2024 Summer Olympics will kick off in Paris. In the sporting disciplines, cars play only a secondary role, for example as escort vehicles in the marathon or cycling road races. For the rest, Formula 1 is not yet an Olympic sport.
But let's take a look at the links between the Olympic Games and car manufacturers. Most of the time as official sponsors, with sometimes unusual vehicles. There is no known brand of car called the Olympia, but there was a model designated as such.
The Opel Olympia was the first mass-produced German car with a self-supporting body made entirely of sheet steel. The successor to the 1.3-litre Opel, which remained in the Opel range until October 1935, was named after the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin and Garmisch-Partenkirchen.
Until October 1940, when the Reich government ordered Opel to cease production of civilian vehicles, 168,875 Olympia cars were produced. After the end of the Second World War, production of a revised model resumed in December 1947. Later, various "Olympia Rekord" models were produced, as well as the Opel Olympia A, a sort of luxury Kadett, between 1967 and 1970.
Opel Olympia (1947) Toyota was one of the first official vehicle sponsors of the 1964 Olympic Games. Eight years later, the event became regional again: BMW supported the 1972 Games on home soil. At the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich, BMW took the start with two experimental electrically powered vehicles.
The converted BMW 1602s served as a means of transport for the organising committee and were used as escort and camera cars in various long-distance events. The range is sufficient for a marathon, but no more. But lead batteries weighing 350 kilos and a range of around 67 miles are clearly not attractive for a production vehicle.
BMW therefore set up a number of research and development projects to bring better and, more importantly, more efficient electric motor technology onto the road. In 1992, there was a similar local revival, again electric. The Summer Games were held in Barcelona, Seat's home town.
The Olympic marathon regulations stipulated that the vehicle in front had to be emission-free. Seat seized the opportunity and transformed one of its brand-new Toledo models into an all-electric version . In just three months, the experts at Seat put their first electric model on the road.
Read also: Engineer Thomas Kurz was involved in the transformation and remembers this tremendous achievement with emotion: "At the time, making an electric vehicle was something completely new, so it was very exciting. The vehicle was so unique that, once it was finished, we first had to register it in Germany, because nobody knew how to register an electric vehicle in Spain . At the time, the main objective was to ensure that the Seat Toledo's 500-kilogram battery provided enough energy to cover the full marathon distance of 42.
195 kilometres. Almost three decades ago, a power output of 22 PS was more than sufficient for the task. The electric Seat Toledo has to adapt to the speed of marathon runners, and that speed is less than 20 mph.
Moving on to 2006: Fiat took advantage of the Turin Winter Games to appear as a car sponsor and at the same time present the new Sedici to the world public. In 2008, Volkswagen , which was still a powerful company in China at the time, supported the Summer Games in Beijing. The press trips organised for invited journalists caused problems with the German tax authorities.
BMW seems to be paying more attention, sponsoring the London 2012 Summer Games with a fleet of vehicles. BMW, sponsor of the London 2012 Olympic Games Toyota fleet for Paris 2024, Photo: André Ferreira Toyota fleet for the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris As in Tokyo in 2021, Toyota will take on this task in Paris in 2024. Toyota has developed a global concept for this purpose.
It includes a shuttle fleet of more than 2,650 electrified vehicles and 700 electric mobility solutions for the last mile, including 250 Accessible People Mover (APM), which will be redesigned and manufactured in Europe for Paris 2024. In addition, the company is demonstrating its commitment at several central contact points in the centre of Paris..
