A beautiful BMW 850 CSi, seen in June 2015 in Lido area in Beijing. I first met her in 2012. At that time, it looked like a totally new car. And even in 2015, she looked factory fresh. The owner clearly put in a lot of time and money to keep this car alive.
Note the Changan-Ford S-Max in the background. The first generation BMW 8 Series (E31) was made from 1990 until 1999. The BMW 850 CSi was the fastest 850 of all, based on the secret BMW M8 prototype that was built in 1990. When BMW cancelled the program the M-Division used a slightly de-tuned version of that engine for the 850 CSi.
And what an engine it was! A mighty 5.7 liter V12, good for 375hp and 550nm. Top speed was 275km/h and 0-100 was gone in 5.6 seconds. The engine had an M-badge on top, identifying it clearly as an M-Division power plant. The BMW 850CSi was made from 1992 until 1996, total production was only 1745 examples. This black beauty from Beijing was likely originally exported to the US, as the Euro-spec 850 CSi was only available with a manual gearbox.
The interior was in a great shape too. The black leather seats look slightly worn but the black plastics seem okay. The center stack has the typical 1990’s button-overload and it still got the original radio cassette player.
BBS-style alloy wheels are a work of art!
The BMW 8-series was not exported to China when it was new and is therefore an extremely rare sight in the country. Some cars arrived via the gray market and diplomatic channels. The plate on this car is very old, late 1990’s I think, so this BMW has been in country for a while.
The BMW 8-Series had fancy pop-up headlights. These lights were popular in period, used on all sorts of supercars but also on less-expensive sporty sleds, like the Toyota Celica or the Volvo 480.
Over my many years in China I have seen around ten BMW 8-Series, most of them in the Beijing area. There are some others in Shanghai and Guangdong Province as well. More recently, some are newly imported from elsewhere. These cars are imported as museum-exhibits and can not legally be registered for the road. But in China, there is always a way…