Bolliger & Mabillard Brand Guidelines: The Monthey Engineers Behind the Inverted Coaster

Two engineers leave Giovanola.

Bolliger & Mabillard began in Monthey, in the Swiss canton of Valais, in 1988. Its founders, the engineers Walter Bolliger and Claude Mabillard, both came from Giovanola, a Valais company that Le Temps describes as a builder of ski lifts and that English Wikipedia says supplied rides to Intamin. At Giovanola they helped design Shockwave, the stand-up coaster at Six Flags Magic Mountain, English Wikipedia says, and the ride-history site ParkVault credits them with a track built around a large hollow steel box. ParkVault and English Wikipedia say the pair left in 1987; the company, Le Temps and the trade publication NewsParcs all date the firm to 1988.

The legal name is a clue to what the business is: Bolliger & Mabillard Consulting Engineers Inc., or Ingénieurs Conseils SA in French. Walter Bolliger told Le Temps in 2016 that the pair had never thought of going into roller coasters when they opened their engineering office. ParkVault says their first work lay outside the amusement industry. Then Six Flags asked them to change one of its existing installations near Chicago. English Wikipedia identifies that job as new cars for a Giovanola-built bobsled coaster being moved to Six Flags Great America.

A stand-up coaster for the same park followed. Called Iron Wolf, it opened in 1990 as the company’s first coaster, English Wikipedia says. Two years later came Batman: The Ride, also at Great America, with riders suspended below the track. NewsParcs credited the company in 2013 with inventing the inverted coaster in 1992, and English Wikipedia calls that ride the first of its kind and cites a US patent granted to Bolliger and Mabillard in 1993.

Le Temps says the firm began with three people; English Wikipedia says four, including the founders. Walter Bolliger told NewsParcs at IAAPA Attractions Expo 2012 that it employed 37, mostly engineers and technicians, and Le Temps counted 46 in 2016, when it visited an apartment building in Monthey with nothing outside to show what went on within.

Models with plain names.

The company sells its work by model: Inverted, Dive, Wing and Hyper are four of the ranges on its website. NewsParcs dated the dive coaster to 1998 and the floorless coaster to 1999. German Wikipedia names Oblivion at Alton Towers as the first Dive Coaster, and it lists Silver Star, the hyper coaster at Europa-Park, as opening in 2002; Le Temps used that ride as its example of the company’s work.

The Wing Coaster prototype, Raptor, opened at Gardaland in Italy in 2011 for Merlin Entertainments, NewsParcs reported. “We wanted to create a different experience, as if you were sitting on the edge of a wing on an airplane,” Walter Bolliger told the publication, explaining that the wide train places riders away from the rail. The same interview described a change to Hyper Coaster trains, with the rows of four seats, long a company signature, split into a V shape. English Wikipedia calls the Surf Coaster its most recent model, and German Wikipedia gives Pipeline at SeaWorld Orlando as the example.

The Incredible Hulk Coaster at Universal’s Islands of Adventure, was a launched hybrid from 1999, NewsParcs noted; Walter Bolliger said in that interview that the company would build a launch coaster if a client asked. English Wikipedia says its first in-house launched coaster was Thunderbird at Holiday World in 2015. On English Wikipedia’s account, the company has often worked with the engineer Werner Stengel and with the designers at client parks.

English Wikipedia says the 100th coaster was completed in 2016; the company’s website now claims more than 120 installations, and Keystone-SDA, citing the RCDB database, reported more than 130 in October 2026. English Wikipedia, citing Amusement Today’s Golden Ticket Awards, says twelve B&M rides were on the steel coaster Top 50 in 2025, with Fury 325 at Carowinds at number one. In August 2026 the company announced that Tormenta Rampaging Run was operating at Six Flags Over Texas, describing it as the first giga Dive Coaster, at 309 feet.

Steel, renderings and trade stands.

Ride makers sell to parks rather than to the public. The park usually names and themes the ride, and the maker’s own identity sits further back, in the engineering. That shapes how these firms present themselves.

The factory floor is usually the first picture. Long curved lengths of steel track, jigs, welded supports and finished trains waiting for shipment do the work of a product shot, because a coaster cannot be photographed whole until it stands in a park. Alongside them come CAD renderings, which let a maker show a layout, a station or a new train to a buyer long before any steel is cut.

The trade stand is the second stage. IAAPA Expo, the industry’s large annual show, is where makers put full-size vehicles and scale models in front of park owners, announce new models and compete for the show’s product awards. Company websites tend to follow the same logic, leading with reference lists and record claims rather than with a founder’s story.

The third stage belongs to the ride itself. On-ride films, shot from the front seat and released by parks and makers, are a common way to show a layout to people who will never see the drawings, and a park’s opening day puts the finished work in public view. This guide sets out who founded each firm, who owns it and where its work is made, and it attributes every claim to its source. Colours and typefaces here are our own interpretation, not the companies’ standards.

An engineering office, not a factory.

The company designs in Switzerland and builds through others. Le Temps reported in 2016 that fabrication is subcontracted to several manufacturers in Switzerland, elsewhere in Europe and the United States, with the company supervising the installation of every ride. English Wikipedia, citing a 2008 report, says Clermont Steel Fabricators makes the track for its North American coasters. The company’s website puts it this way: Monthey is where its coasters are “imagined, designed, and engineered,” and B&M “oversees the entire production process.” It also uses the phrase “Swiss craftsmanship.” Each custom project takes close to two years, Le Temps said, at five or six installations a year; Walter Bolliger had told NewsParcs three to five.

Sources differ on the address. The website gives Monthey. Keystone-SDA reported in October 2026 that the company is based in Monthey and headquartered in Aigle, in the neighbouring canton of Vaud. The firm calls itself “B&M to its friends,” and its website runs the lines “We build coasters. We build icons.” In 2026 it listed stands at IAAPA Expo in Orlando and IAAPA Expo Asia in Osaka. Le Temps named Sophie Bolliger, Walter Bolliger’s daughter, as marketing director in 2016, when the company was a finalist for the Swiss Venture Club prize for family-owned firms.

In October 2026 one of its rides was the scene of a fatal accident. On 12 October a rider was ejected from Goliath, a B&M hyper coaster opened in 2006 at Six Flags Over Georgia, and died, and other people were injured, Keystone-SDA and Atlanta News First reported, citing police. Six Flags closed nine similar coasters at six parks in the United States and Canada as a precaution, Keystone-SDA said, eight of them B&M rides; Newsweek later counted twelve rides closed at nine locations, eleven of them by B&M. The company said it was investigating and would not comment further until it understood what had happened. Georgia’s insurance and safety fire commissioner opened an investigation, and state rules keep the ride out of service until that is finished, Atlanta News First reported on 15 October. CBS News reported on 5 November 2026 that the ride was still closed, that the state investigation was continuing and that no cause had been published; Six Flags said it was cooperating fully and had added seat belts to Goliath and to coasters with similar restraints.

For a design guide, Bolliger & Mabillard shows how a firm of engineers can build a recognised name from two surnames, an abbreviation and plainly named models. Compare Intamin, the Swiss ride company its founders knew through Giovanola, and Six Flags, the park chain that gave them their first coaster work. For this guide we use a slate, a teal and a steel grey with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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