Dirk Häcker’s BMW M Legacy: The Engineer Behind Today’s Best M Cars

A look back at Dirk Häcker’s 37-year career at BMW M and the cars that defined his engineering legacy.

Earlier this week, BMW M announced a new engineering boss in one Alexander Karajlovic. Karajlovic takes over for a man named Dirk Häcker, a name you might just recognize if you’ve been paying quite close attention. In fact, Häcker has been working at BMW longer than I have been alive, which isn’t something a guy in his thirties gets to say very often. With an incredible 37-year tenure comes, perhaps inevitably, a portfolio of work that doesn’t just speak for itself, but for the brand Häcker helped shape — and, to some extent, for the man himself.

A Legacy of Leadership

Over the last decade or so, Häcker has filled various engineering leadership positions at BMW M. Leading development at M since 2015, he played an integral role in shaping some of the most advanced M cars to date. Perhaps tellingly, his tenure in leadership started in driving dynamics. What better fit for a future M engineering leader? Even more notably, Häcker is an experienced driver. He’s served as a long-term driving instructor for the BMW Driving Experience — which tracks (no pun intended) with his reputation at the company for being a fantastic driver. Which is perhaps another fortuitous coincidence, as that’s exactly what Franciscus van Meel — BMW M CEO — requires from a person doing the job Häcker ended up with.

Franciscus van Meel is another remarkable coincidence in Häcker’s career. The two met before van Meel had come to BMW in 2014 — tedly sometime in the mid-1990s when van Meel was at Continental. So — van Meel was supplier side. Frank was working at Continental Automotive Services on technologies like the ESC. Van Meel once told us that he developed the stability control for the E46 M3 with Häcker. According to people close them, Häcker would unrelentingly push for better and better products. There wasn’t any way of knowing it at the time, but van Meel would then bring Häcker on nearly 20 years later at BMW as a head of R&D.

Häcker’s first project in his 11-year tenure as lead of BMW M engineering was officially the BMW M8. However, when he started, he told us he wanted to take the F90 M5 — then a new product — to new heights. The F90 M5 Competition and F90 M5 CS followed. Then we got the F87 M2 Competition and M2 CS, G81 M3 Touring, M3/M4 CS and M4 CSL, and a lot more exciting products that we enjoy today. Even some cooler ones that never saw the production line. In general, we suspect his behind the wheel experience has a lot to do with why all of those cars handle and stop significantly better than a car that size has any real business doing.

We did get the XM as well, something we always used to bring up in conversations with him, as a way of poking fun.

And we still have yet to drive some of the other things Häcker developed. He worked on the aggressive Track Package for the existing G87 M2. He also developed the upcoming but officially unconfirmed M2 xDrive. Some other interesting wait-and-sees include the G84 M3 and ZA0 M3, both of which are on the way but won’t hit the market for another few years. Same goes for the X3 M and X4 M electric. So if the M5 CS is any indicator, the best is yet to come.

Dirk Häcker’s Lasting Influence and Personal Anecdotes

Häcker’s name pops up pretty regularly if you look at our content over the last few years. It’s logical: his candid, soft-spoken nature and fluency in both technical jargon and its layperson equivalents made him a “go-to” for Horatiu, BMWBLOG’s Editor in Chief. “He never thought a question was silly,” Horatiu told me. “Even though I would always probe him on weight and death of manuals.” He indulged Horatiu with personal passion projects, like the M2 CSL dream BMW.

“He called it the M2 CSL Armageddon Edition, because I put every single wish of mine in it, something realistically not possible.” Being from Augsburg and an ardent supporter of the local football club was another personal connection for Horatiu, an FC Augsburg jersey enjoyer. Arguably even more important, Häcker always asked for feedback. He’d bounce questions about electric car racing, or which cars put a smile on Horatiu’s face.

Nearly four decades is objectively a long time to do anything. We’re glad Häcker chose to spend it with BMW, where it’s clear his engineering talents and ability to talk passionately about the cars all of us care so much about were not wasted. Häcker played an integral part in bringing arguably the best modern M vehicle to market — the M5 CS — and in the process cemented his legacy with the automaker.

Farewell, Dirk Häcker — thanks for the cars, quotes, and everything in between. And here are some of the videos we filmed together over the years: