IV. Interlude: Welcher Schwarze Montag? The BMW E31 8 Series (1990–1999)
Before Ferrari’s 456 GT, Bentley’s Continental R, or Mercedes’ 600SEC had fully arrived, BMW doubled down. At Frankfurt in September 1989 it unveiled the E31 850i, a low, wide, V12 grand tourer that extended the 750iL’s logic into coupe form. It was not a side project. It was the second front.
The 850i became only the 2nd postwar German 12-cylinder car. Development had begun in 1981 as a replacement for the E24 6 Series, but the brief grew more ambitious as BMW’s V12 program matured. The aim was clear: take the 750iL’s refinement and systems intelligence, give it a true GT body, and make the result credible against Ferrari, Mercedes, and anyone else building expensive 2-doors.
BMW described it in predictably grand terms, but the substance was there. The 8 Series was conceived as a technical grand tourer, not a mere coupe version of the 7. It promised Ferrari-adjacent pace, real luxury, and the sort of German usability Italians still treated as a regrettable distraction.
Under Klaus Kapitza’s body lay a platform engineered for sustained speed. CAD and wind-tunnel work were central from the start. The car was wide, low, pillarless, and unusually slippery at 0.29 Cd. Flush glass, optimized mirrors, hidden wipers, tight seals, and careful packaging made it far cleaner through the air than the old 6 Series. This was one of those late-1980s BMW programs in which aerodynamic housekeeping became part of the aesthetic.
At launch, every 850i used the same 5.0-liter M70 V12 introduced in the 750iL, paired either with a 4-speed ZF automatic or, unusually and importantly, a 6-speed Getrag manual. Performance sat squarely in exotic territory for the time. The car would do 155 mph, limited, and reach 60 mph in the low 6s. That was enough to make several established GTs look older than they wanted to admit.
It got Ferrari’s attention immediately. The 412 was already overdue when the 850i arrived, and BMW’s car made that fact impossible to ignore. Mercedes needed until 1991 for a V12 coupe. Ferrari needed the 456. BMW had moved first, and not cautiously.
The technology matched the powertrain. The 8 Series transplanted much of the 750iL’s systems thinking into a 2+2 GT: seatbelt integration, dual-zone climate control, Servotronic steering, electronic damping, serious onboard electronics, and a cockpit that felt less flashy than expensive. It was driver-focused, but not spartan. BMW knew this car had to cross continents, not just impress outside restaurants.
That was the E31’s real talent. It was not a raw sports car and did not pretend to be. It was a high-speed private office with a V12. Ferrari and Lamborghini gave you theater. BMW gave you competence so complete it could pass for understatement.
The early 1990s recession, the Gulf War, and fuel-price anxiety quickly thinned the market for 12-cylinder GTs. BMW answered with the 840Ci in 1993. Its V8 brought lower cost, less weight over the nose, and only a modest performance sacrifice on paper. The idea was sensible: keep the E31 alive by broadening the range beyond the shrinking class of buyers who insisted on 12 cylinders.
In practice, the V8 did not displace the V12 mystique. More than 2-thirds of all E31s still left the factory with 12 cylinders. Buyers who could afford an 8 Series generally wanted the engine that made the car culturally relevant in the first place. The 840Ci helped the line survive. The 850i and later 850Ci remained the center of gravity.
BMW updated the V12 car in 1993 and renamed it 850Ci, but the change was more than typography. The new 5.4-liter M73 brought useful gains in torque, cleaner emissions behavior, and even greater polish. It was still a 24-valve single-overhead-cam engine, but a better one. The 850Ci was not a revolution. It was the mature version of the idea.
The M73’s later afterlife in the E38 and the Silver Seraph is the measure of its character. BMW had built a V12 that could serve a flagship 7 Series, a personal GT, and a Rolls-Royce with equal credibility. Its great talent was not spectacle. It was composure.
When the 850i arrived, Ferrari was winding down the 412 and preparing the 456 GT. Bentley was approaching the Continental R. Mercedes had the 600SL and 600SEC on deck. Aston Martin had the Virage. Porsche still sold the 928. The field was crowded, but not coherent.
The BMW sat between categories rather than neatly within one. Next to the Ferrari 456, it felt heavier, calmer, and less eager to telegraph itself. Next to the Bentley Continental R, it looked like it had come from a later century. Against the Porsche 928 GTS it offered more polish and more gravitas, if not the same sports-car bluntness. That was the point. The E31 was not trying to out-Ferrari Ferrari or out-Bentley Bentley. It was trying to make both seem partial.
That is why the car still matters. The E31 created a distinct niche in the GT hierarchy: not flamboyant, not nostalgic, not crude, just deeply engineered and properly fast. It was the German answer to a question Italians and Britons thought they still owned.
The 850CSi and the S70, S70/1, /2, and /3
BMW Motorsport saw more in the M70 than BMW corporate initially admitted. The first serious outcome was the 1992 850CSi and its 5.6-liter S70B56. Still a 2-valve single-overhead-cam engine, but with more displacement, more compression, sharper cams, freer breathing, and 375 bhp with 550 Nm. It came only with a 6-speed manual and received the suspension, brakes, wheels, mirrors, and exhaust changes to match. BMW avoided calling it an M8 or even a full M car, but the S-code engine told the truth. This was Motorsport work in all but branding.
Behind it lurked the real fantasy: the 1-off M8 prototype. Denied for years and later unveiled with suitable drama, it used the extraordinary S70/1, a 6.1-liter quad-cam, 48-valve V12 with individual roller-barrel throttles and roughly 640 horsepower. Had it reached production, it would have been one of the most outrageous road cars of the era. Recession, emissions, and a moment of sanity killed it. The fact that BMW built it at all remains one of the more revealing facts about the company in this period.
The engine family’s most important chapter came elsewhere. Gordon Murray chose BMW M to build a bespoke V12 for the McLaren F1, and the resulting S70/2 became one of the canonical great engines: 6.1 liters, dry sump, 4 valves per cylinder, titanium rods, VANOS, individual throttles, and 627 horsepower without supercharging or turbocharging. It was a technical flex and, crucially, a compact one.
In the F1 it did what legends are supposed to do. It delivered record speed, lasting significance, and the kind of authority later, more powerful cars rarely matched in spirit.
BMW Motorsport then evolved the concept into the S70/3 for endurance racing. In the V12 LM and V12 LMR it led BMW to its first outright Le Mans win in 1999, a milestone the company had chased for decades. The X5 Le Mans concept later used an unrestricted version simply to demonstrate that the engine could make almost anything excessive.
The engine’s appeal spread beyond BMW’s own catalog. Italdesign’s Nazca concepts turned the M70 and later S70 into mid-engine supercar material, their carbon-fiber bodies and low mass revealing how much range the architecture actually had. Luxury-sedan engine, GT engine, supercar engine, endurance-racing engine. Few programs stretch that far without losing coherence.
That breadth is the E31’s deeper legacy. It may have sold poorly relative to its ambition, and the “glorious failure” label is not wholly unfair, but it proved that BMW could stand on the same field as Ferrari, Bentley, and anyone else building a serious grand tourer. It did so not by imitating them, but by being more methodical than all of them.