It may sound hard to believe for some, but BMW's M performance division has been in the business of winning for 40 years now. To celebrate the occasion, the German automaker has just released this video which chronicles everything from the first M car and the glory days of the 1970s, to the original M3, until today's modern street machines. The M division, previously known as BMW Motorsport GmbH, was founded in 1972 and its first racing success was the 3.0 CSL coupe that won the 1973 European Touring Car Championship.

It also had a class win at Le Mans that year where for the first time the M division's now famous blue, violet, and red stripe theme was shown. 1979 saw the introduction of the iconic M1 which went to have an incredible racing career of its own.

Powered by a 3.5-liter inline-six, the race version M1 produced 470 horsepower while the road going car was detuned to 277hp. After dropping out of F1 in 1986, the company concentrated their efforts on touring car competition with models such as the E30 M3. Today they remain one of the benchmark performance divisions of any automaker. With its committed team of engineers, drivers and countless fans, there's no question that we can expect even greater things from the M division for many years to come.