Join us this week as we venture into the plush leather seats of the ultimate retro techno-toy: BMW’s 8-Series. In order to pay proper tribute to the veritable king of rapid luxury, we’ve tracked down Taylor Patterson’s pristine example of the line-topping, limited-production 850CSi.
While BMW was revealed to have been making a bonafide go at an M8 variant of the big grand touring coupe back in the early ‘90s—and in fact the company’s sole box-flared beast of a prototype still exists, complete with carbon-fiber wheel covers—that car never made it to the masses, or at least to that portion with the taste and means to acquire such a car that would have likely carried an MSRP somewhere in the Ferrari territory it was aimed at.
Luckily for those people though (and for the second and third and fourth owners), M still left some incriminating fingerprints on the 8-Series, and as with most stews stirred by its hand, the result was an unmatched vessel of prowess that they simply called the 850CSi.
At the time of its reveal in 1992, the peer group for this car was almost nonexistent, and on a more abstract scale, there have been very few in its wake to attempt a similar blend of substance and poise. It never claimed to be a sporty coupe, yet it could outperform many of them. The car’s true domain however was a lengthy trip with the room to show off how comfortable 100+MPH can be; this was the kind of car whose essence was understated, yet its presence never went unnoticed.
Though any form of the E31 chassis was and is a genuine rarity, the CSi stood even further apart. At the time, this was the end-all, be-all, the award-winning stew of a high-tech ecosystem paired to a taut motor that could push the impressive package well past the imposed safety speed threshold of 155 MPH. Further boosting the desirability of the CSi model was the inclusion of special staggered forged M-System wheels with the distinctive “throwing star” bladed covers, a more r
