A wondrous white E34 BMW 5-series sedan, seen parked in the Sanlitun embassy district in central Beijing in 2013. The good Bimmer was in a fine shape, with a clean body but in need of a little love and maintenance.
The BMW was parked across the street from Schiller’s, a famous embassy restaurant-bar hangout where I spend a trillion afternoons, evenings, and nights. They had a fantastic lunch menu, great snacks, and all sorts of beer on tap. I mainly had Yanjing or Carlsberg 0.5 liter drafts.
Their best beer food was a thing called the ‘snack center’, a mix of greasy meatballs, chicken wings, and French fries. Lovely. At lunch time, the restaurant was mainly visited by employees of various African embassies in the area, including, at that day, folks of the Cameroon embassy.
Sadly, as with so many great places in Beijing, Schiller’s is no longer around. It closed in 2016 and moved to another location called Groovy Schiller’s. But that one has since closed down as well.
The interior was okay, with leopard-print seat covers, a leopard steering wheel cover, and somewhat odd rubber covers over he hand brake lever and the gear lever. The radio was a typical Chinese after-market example.
But in anyway, it was great to see such on old BMW on the road in Beijing. The E34 third generation BMW 5-Series was made from 1987 until 1996. It was available with various petrol and diesel engines.
Unfortunately there was no engine badge on this white example so I cannot be sure what was under the bonnet. Double exhaust pipe points at a six-in-line model. The E34 was not officially sold in China so these cars are very rare here, especially in this condition.
Like in most countries, cars used by foreign embassies have special license plates in China. In the capital Beijing, diplomatic license plates start with the character 使 (shi), is short for 大使馆 dashiguan, meaning embassy.
Each embassy has its own 3-digit number. In this case the number is 122, which stands for Camroon. The next 3 digits are the car number. The ambassador’s official car is always 001 but there are no specific rules for the other numbers, and plates may be carried over from car to car. Our BMW has car number 030, which means that the license plate, when it was issued, was used by the 30th car used by the Cameroon embassy.