BMW
BMW are well known for building high performance touring cars, they probably do it better than anybody else. There may be others who can beat them when it comes to luxury but nobody can beat them when it comes to performance. No matter what class of car you are talking about if there is a BMW in the class you can be sure it will be at the top in terms of performance.
BMW started out building engines for airplanes, the company really grew during the First World War with the huge demand for their engines. Unfortunately after the war ended Germany was not allowed to have military airplanes and business dried up for BMW. Looking for a way to keep the company afloat they initially decided to build motorcycles. After some success with this they started to build cars as well. Although they met with enough success to keep the company afloat they were hardly a booming business. With the serious economic problems that Germany had between the wars the company was just getting by.
Really the only thing that kept BMW going was the Second World War, this gave them chance to go back into their main business building airplane engines. The massive military buildup was a major financial boon to BMW. However after the war they again found themselves back in a position where their airplane engine business was no longer and viable and they had to find another way to make money. At this point they turned back to building motorcycles and cars. And yet again it was a struggle and they just barely got by. Clearly they needed a change in direction if they were going to survive.
The turning point for BMW occurred in the late fifties when they bought they design to a small Italian compact car and started putting their motorcycle engines in them. At the time a number of companies were having a lot of success selling small cheap cars and BMW decided to follow their lead. This worked out well for them as the Isetta was a big seller. Despite the fact that the car only remained in production for three years it was enough put the company on to solid financial footing.
Once the company was on solid ground financially they could start to build cars of their own design. It was the decision to focus on sporty touring cars that really made BMW's reputation. They made the decision that the best way to sell cars was to race them so they developed some of the most successful touring car racers in the history of the category. This helped to build the company's reputation for high performance that has stayed with them to this day. Today BMW builds cars across a number of classes and the one thing that they all have in common is that they are invariably amongst the best performing cars in their class.