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plant sits off to the right in full view of A92, just as the Spartan-
burg plant overlooks I-85. Sisters you could say.
When BMW announced it would build a plant in Spartan-
burg, it rocked the media. CNN, the
Wall Street Journal,
and
U.S. News & World Report
publicized the event. No amount of
advertising could match BMW’s announcement. Edgar in
South
Carolina, A History
writes: “During the 1990s the selection of
South Carolina locations by Hoffman-LaRoche and Honda were
international news. In particular, the successful wooing of the gi-
ant automaker BMW caught the attention of industry recruiters
everywhere.”
And when a sparkling white 318i, the first North Ameri-
can-produced BMW, rolled off the assembly line September 8,
1994 it represented thirty-three years of leadership and growth
by South Carolina’s technical college system.
BMW evaluated over 250 sites worldwide before choosing
the state it knew could best provide a modern workforce. The
state’s development board director Wayne Sterling praised Dr.
Jim Morris and his team for their role in bringing BMW to the
state. Governor Campbell proclaimed South Carolina a “winner.”
Campbell went on to say, “with 4,000 jobs and a billion-dollar
impact, South Carolina truly has scored a grand slam, proving
the value of our teamwork approach.” The twenty-three-month
span from groundbreaking to the first shipment was the fastest
automobile start-up in history.
BMW put South Carolina on the map. Former tech board
chair Cathy Novinger, reflecting years later, would say, “I don’t
think we really understood at the time the potential that was
there. We knew it was huge. Governor Campbell certainly had a
big hand to play in that, and we knew it was huge. But looking at
it now compared to what we thought it was going to be; I’m not
sure we recognized that it was going to be as big as it is today.”
It was big all right, and it fueled other dreams. Some futile.
An unwritten corporate rule is to never create expectations
that can’t be fulfilled. When Mercedes announced it would build
The 1990s
A H I G H E R R O L E I N E D U C A T I O N
