Initially I wasn’t sure that I was going to share this, my latest find. Don’t get me wrong, I was thrilled to find it seeing as how I hadn’t seen a 745i anywhere in at least two decades. Yet I’ve somehow lost a bit of the spark, maybe one of my inner coilpacks is aging and while I keep accumulating interesting cars in my digital archival garage not all of them make it back out to the light of day. I’m not overtly a BMW fan, yet I was still poring over this one like I would not usually do with a “Siebener”, especially an early ’80s example (a 2000 740i Sport SWB would probably be more my jam). But I knew what it was, took the requisite pictures and then did a little web surfing later that evening. To my surprise and delight, I found that AteUpWithMotor had just posted an in-depth article on the very same subject the day prior. Hmm.
Then a few days ago I, along with you all, learned that Aaron Severson would be joining the CC staff. Well, I can willfully ignore the CC effect to some extent but the Magic 8-Ball on the shelf was now practically shaking itself and flashing “Most Def” at me to release this thing from my files, there was none of the usual murkiness in the depths of that oh-so-influential sphere. With the heavy lifting already done (I’ll link to Aaron’s excellent treatise at the end, really, don’t miss it, it’s excellent as always), let’s do just that and show you one of BMW’s more obscure cars of the 1980s to those in the United States at least, the BMW 745i (E23).
BMW has long played second fiddle to Mercedes on the world stage in terms of powerful luxury sedans. Yes, BMW was usually seen as the sportier of the two with Mercedes the more luxurious and perhaps the better built (or more durable?) option, but in reality they both have very strong sporting pedigrees, both offer sublime luxury offerings, both built (and build) excellent vehicles and take each other very seriously.
Nowhere more so than on the Autobahn; Germany’s still in some parts de-restricted high speed road network that back in the early 1980s was much less restricted than today. As such, there was a horsepower war and Mercedes was pretty much top dog on the Autobahn with the W116 and then the recently introduced W126, especially the 500SEL with its powerful and smooth V8 engine.
BMW meanwhile only had six cylinder power to play with in their top line offering, the 7-series, their V8s and V12s would come later, but they had been playing with turbocharging for some time, most notably in the (very limited) release of the 2002 Turbo of the early 1970s. Other significant European makers such as Porsche, Saab, and Audi were starting to develop and introduce more and more turbocharged vehicles to great effect, so BMW figured this was the time and decided to start at the top.
Thus, the 745i with a 3.2l inline-six paired with a K27 turbocharger from Kühnle, Kopp & Kausch (KKK) was introduced in 1980. Producing 248hp, it was no slouch and especially potent in the mid and upper speed ranges; but ultimately the Mercedes pretty much kept the crown, at least in terms of public perception. Still, the turbo BMW had its fans and a few examples made their way across the Pacific to the U.S. as gray market imports.
This one happens to be a 1983 model and probably the rarest specification in that it has the updated body that kicked in for the 1983 model year with various cosmetic changes, yet still has the earlier 3.2liter (M102) engine, which was based on the “big six” M30 engine family. Later in 1983 the engine would be upgraded to a 3.4liter (M106) engine and the 3speed automatic was replaced with a 4speed amongst a few other changes. Manual transmissions were not on offer as this was really more of an “Executive Express” to devour miles (or kilometers) at very high speeds rather than a more sporting saloon.
David Stanford is a lucky man to have been able to afford to purchase and import his own BMW 745i in presumably 1983 or shortly thereafter. Even though perhaps 20hp would be lost doing some of the required modifications to make the car legal for road use in the U.S., this was still a serious machine and an exceptionally good (and highly comfortable) way to traverse long distances at high speed.
Plenty of people imported cars in the 1980s before those options were severed, mainly as a way to save some money, but usually the cars chosen were similar to the ones on offer here. For someone to pick a 745i with a fairly exotic (for the time) engine and of a spec not even remotely on offer here was a choice made with purpose and on purpose, likely a serious enthusiast who did a lot of reading of European car magazines and/or spent a good chunk of time in Europe; this would be a serious “Q-ship” to wheel around in, heck in 1983 the most common way to have a turbo BMW was to have Callaway slap one of their turbo kits on the 320i. I can recall seeing maybe two or three 745is over the years but they certainly aren’t plentiful over here.
I found this car in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and while I have no idea if this is where the car started out, it makes perfect sense in that in every direction are wide open interstate highways with not much in the way of population for hundreds of miles, the elevation is over 6,000 feet (the effects of which on engine output are mightily mitigated with turbochargers), and there would seem to be plenty of opportunity to let it all hang out while traveling to Denver, Phoenix, Dallas or towards the Mississippi and points beyond all of those
Like many powerful European cars (and especially German ones), this one is geared so that off the line it may not be particularly quick, however once it has a head of steam and is cruising along on a highway, a stab of the throttle is all it takes for it to very quickly accelerate and more importantly, keep on doing so with a mighty shove for far longer than one might think possible.
I’d show you the turbocharger but I make a habit of not digging in mouse or rat’s nests (or whatever it was, the piles of pellets were huge as were the pellets themselves), but there’s the wastegate which serves to dump excess boost in order to protect the engine from itself. The turbo is under the nest and while engine management and good design is important, the basic tenet of a turbo is extremely simple. If not aware of how one works, think of a small axle shaft with a pinwheel on either side.
One side sits in the exhaust stream (red arrow pointing up) which causes it to spin at speeds in excess of 100,000rpm (and why there is such a thing as “lag” as you need exhaust gases to start flowing and a larger turbo will have a heavier wheel to get moving as opposed to a smaller one), and at the other end of the shaft is another wheel in the intake that thus shoves more and more air into the combustion chambers under higher pressure than ambient (blue arrows). If you listen to a turbocharged car (and especially a big truck) you can sometimes hear the whistle of the turbine wheels turning.
Match an increased amount of fuel to the now denser air volume to keep the ratio correct and presto! More power, and once it starts the power sort of seems to build exponentially, at least in engines that are built to accentuate the power aspect over any other consideration. Over the years turbos have gained oil cooling and water cooling for longevity but at the root it’s a very simple device and in this era was simply an apparatus usually hung at the end of the exhaust manifold before the downpipe. Of course the engine itself needs to be engineered to handle the increased pressures but that’s what good engineers get paid to do along with figuring out how to handle the thermal loads imparted on the components.
Nothing depreciates faster than an expensive luxury car and while this one has surely been sitting for some time, the fact that it managed to rack up over a quarter million miles puts the lie to claims that turbos are all inherently bad and short-lived. While it’s certainly possible (probable) that there have been repairs and lots of maintenance over the years and miles, this though is precisely the kind of car where long before this level of mileage was reached any repairs would have been quite uneconomical in relation to the car’s then-current market value, and really the “social value” of this generation of 7-series took a dive once the subsequent generation was released. Somehow BMW’s E23 7 never really had the “classic” vibe of the same era 5 or Mercedes W116 or W123 that were still considered pretty cool after the subsequent generations launched and if anything those have become even more revered as time went on.
This is especially so seeing as how the engine was not a U.S. spec one and BMW itself wasn’t particularly interested in providing warranty or other services to gray market vehicles. You had to either really love the car or it simply had to be pretty good without asking for overly much in order to keep it going for that many miles.
BMW was always unique in how they usually positioned the exhaust outlet(s) as close to center as possible without having to add more bends to the pipe. One of the quirks that has gone by the wayside. This would be the view that others would see on the interstate, well, at least momentarily, then it would become a smaller and smaller speck as it strode towards the horizon with no regard for the double nickel and fog lights likely ablaze.
You may also have noted this car lacks turn signals front and rear. While in Germany this car’s left blinker would be perpetually blinking in the left lane of the Autobahn with the high-beams looking like strobe lights flashing everyone out of the way, BMWs of the 1980s didn’t need (use) turn signals once they got to the United States. Haha, sorry, I’m kidding, but I can’t give up on that trope, it was just too real a thing back then. You just know David Stanford’s collar was perpetually popped on his pink Izod polo shirt too, right?
Moving on…As with Mercedes, Jaguar, and other premium manufacturers, leather interiors were not standard in other markets and in many not even preferred, this is something that American consumers have been sold as being desirable. This car had sheepskin covers over every seat but underneath were very sumptuous cloth covered surfaces that frankly for the most parts look better than leather would at this point in time.
The rear cushion is pulled forward out of place here and BMW didn’t make a long wheelbase E23, however space back here was generous enough for those fortunate enough to be driven somewhere.
I believe the wood is a solid chunk and not just a veneer, however it’s still remarkable how it has held up over 40-odd years. There’s no gloss on it anymore (if there ever was) but it looks phenomenal. As do the cloth inserts on the doors. The plug at the bottom serves as a manual override access point should the window electronics fail; I had considered that’s where the manual winder would be (power windows were optional in Europe) but the door pocket would be in the way, perhaps manual windowed cars didn’t get pockets?
The passenger seat seems more worn than the driver’s seat which is odd, but still looks quite comfortable. Rich carpets everywhere and overall an excellent ambience.
Buttons, knobs, wood aplenty. Permission to take off, please! Just pull the lever back into “D”, and plant the right foot and then hold on, we’ll be in Flagstaff in short order. Note German language on many of the controls (and the instrument cluster earlier), not everything was required to be swapped out when importing a vehicle.
The Ford Granada (U.S. version) may have tried to imply in its advertising that it looked vaguely like something European if the viewer was blind and at the bottom of a shaft in a coal mine, but they never showed a comparison of dashboards as I recall. This still looks relevant and inviting today, getting close to 50 years from introduction and not just due to age and nostalgia but due to excellent design with substance over cheap flash, flourishes, and crap like fleur-de-lis’.
This generation of BMW was offered through 1987 in the U.S. as first the 733i, then the 735i and finally the L7 before being replaced by the next generation (E32) which started with a 735i and then finally got BMW into the seriously big leagues with the V12 in the 750i (and of course a larger number on the trunk lid, vitally important, that. V8s were also offered eventually as the 740i and there were finally long wheelbase models available as well.
The sun conspired against me and so I kind of flubbed the trunk shot here, but it’s spacious, take my word for it, your golf bags will fit, we can hit the links in Scottsdale by sunrise if we leave by 3am, it’s only 400-ish miles.
Oh, and why name it 745i instead of 732Ti or something like that? Well, the FIA had an equivalency formula for racing engines in order to be able to somewhat compare power outputs of naturally aspirated engines with turbocharged ones, and the factor is 1.4. So if you take 3.2 (liters displacement) and multiply by 1.4 you get 4.5 if you round it. Thus 745 and the “i” for fuel injection. So the number pretty much works. But when they increased the engine size to 3.4 liters later in 1983 they didn’t rebadge it to 4.8 so go figure. Then again the 733i only had a 3.2 and the 735i had a 3.4… We all know a bigger number is always better than a smaller one.
Welcome aboard, Aaron! I’d happily take a ride with you in a 745i anytime (preferably the one featured in your post over mine).
Here’s the link to Aaron’s piece on the 745i at AUWM, check it out, it covers everything I didn’t.
Old beauty.
BMWs and Mercedes from the 80s have a special charm
Should try to track down the guy and find out the backstory!
This is pure speculation, but I wouldn’t be surprised if this is the original owner. The name and geography match, and he was probably an affluent enough person to have this car imported and to have it cared for properly.
This particular David Stanford was an El Paso attorney who specialized in securities and investment law, and in the early 1980s was a partner in a large law firm. That’s a likely profile for someone who would import an obscure and costly European car during that period. Shortly afterwards, he was appointed CEO of a New Mexico-based investment banking firm. Nothing definitively ties this person to this particular car (and it doesn’t appear that he maintained a permanent residence in New Mexico is succeeding decades), but my hunch is that he’s the owner.
The clip below is from an early 1980s business bio.
Seems extremely likely, given his location and profession. I can just see him behind the wheel of the ultimate Bimmer of the early ’80s.
I’ve always liked this generation of BMW, now that cars are so homogeneous even more so. Narrowly missed a very low mileage ’87 318i a couple of months back.
Still a very handsome machine, particularly with those little Euro bumpers. I would have like to take a ride in it with David Stanford back in the day.
Nice that you didn’t mess with the nests. I found a rat nest under the intake plenum of my Mustang 4.0 this year, removing it was rather disgusting but it did take away the barn smell that car already had when we bought it.
Fun find, Jim. I can’t help wondering what ultimately sent that 745i to the junkyard, particularly completely intact and seemingly without body damage. My guess is that the original owner probably parted company with the car some time before it eventually wound up in the yard. A tell about that for me comes from your interior photos and the rat’s nest of wires under the dash. I note the number of splices and decidedly after-market connectors.
One of the things I recall about grey market cars back in the day (fortunately, just stuff I “heard” and not actually experienced) was that many of the adaptations required for registration were things that wound up being undocumented and sometimes more than a bit janky. I can imagine that if one somehow lost track of whoever did the federalization work, the problems would just mount and mount and mount until there’s be practically no way of figuring out issues…particularly for stuff like electrical system issues.
With the request to enlighten someone ignorant:
The sticker in the engine compartment tells us: “Conforms to all applicable federal … bumper standards …”.
How does this fit with the fact that the vehicle (as a non-vintage car) kept Euro bumpers ?
Either the original owner reattached the Euro bumpers after the sticker was acquired or a subsequent owner replaced them? But you’re right, the initial US registration would almost certainly have been for a car that didn’t have the bumpers we see here.
It’s unlikely that anyone in an annual state inspection (if there was one, and depending on the state, likely not) would have picked up on whether the car retained the modifications it needed to be initially registered.
As Jeff surmised, very likely the original owner just refitted them after gaining the sticker, if you went to the trouble of choosing this car to import, you’d probably want the Euro bumpers on it, all part of the mythos and not particularly uncommon. The U.S. has virtually no inspection programs that would look for that after the fact, especially in the western states and certainly no police department would. In fact you could drive around with any bumpers on at all and likely never encounter any official trouble.
That being said bumpers and headlights are probably the two most “Euro” things that remain or get put back on in regard to gray market imports. It’s also possible that whoever does check these things back in the day didn’t care or know or was happy to accept $20 for the Christmas Party Fund. The gray market industry was a semi-shady thing back then, we don’t have anything remotely like the TüV.
This bumper issue raises a big question. I remember seeing a lot of obviously gray market Mercedes (primarily) in LA during the height of the gray import years that obviously did not have 5 mile bumpers. That includes seeing them in showrooms of large gray market importers.
It’s important to note that the US bound cars had significant differences structurally in front and back to accommodate these bumpers’ rather massive mounting/shock absorbing members. I have a hard time picturing making the conversion properly. But some may have. FWIW, for My 1983, the standards were reduced significantly, to 2.5 mph.
I can’t help but wonder about the certification of these gray market cars, especially the bumper aspect. It might be worth a closer look.
Update: Aha! Now I’m totally sure this car never got upgraded to US bumpers. Note the side marker lights on the front and rear fender: those are totally not original for either US or EU market E23 cars; they were added as part of the US certification. The US bound cars had the side marker lights incorporated into their bumpers. If he had installed the US bumpers, he wouldn’t have needed these Pep-Boys add-on side markers. But the feds were pretty picky about meeting the US lighting standards, so he did have to add them.
This confirms my previous comment: I’m utterly convinced the feds didn’t really care about gray import cars meeting the bumper specs, and focused on emission, lighting and certain safety standards.
I don’t know about the feds, but the states were also very concerned about the warranty issues. California in this period passed a law with a whole series of specific warranty disclosure requirements for gray-market cars.
Oh wow, I owned one of those in that exact same color combo, only mine was a 1982, and it was somewhere around 1987 I bought it. Fast, smooth, perfect driving machine. To be honest, did and do not care about BMW’s, so mine was sold in a month of 6 I think, just got it because it was cheapish and money could be made by selling.
re: the “gray market” era. I believe that the heart of the market was the Mercedes W126 S class. The “D mark” was cheap and the German cars were better. An especially attractive import was the Euro 500 SEC. When it was first introduced to the US market the SEC was only available as a 380, with the smaller V-8. The 500 in a coupe came later. And the bumpers on the American market cars, while better integrated than some others, were bigger and unsightly in comparison to the the way Bruno Sacco designed the car and the way it was sold in Europe.
So, gray market SEC = better looks and bigger engine at less cost. Very attractive for those in that market. I remember seeing SECs on loading pallets coming from cargo aircraft at Houston Intercontinental Airport in this period.
” …the wood … There’s no gloss on it anymore (if there ever was)”.
If memory serves well, it never was glossy at all. At best a kind of timid silky shine.
“I had considered that’s where the manual winder would be (power windows were optional in Europe) but the door pocket would be in the way, perhaps manual windowed cars didn’t get pockets?”
On poverty spec Euro cars with hand cranks, the crank mounts were located exactly where the electrical switch was located on properly equipped vehicles. They had these door pockets, too.
Nice read, thanks, I enjoyed learning about the 735, 749, and 750.
I was so impressed by the 733i that Car and Driver road tested when this model first debuted. It was white with a red leather interior and best of all, a four speed manual transmission! I was a fan of the Bavaria and was seriously considering buying one at that time.The 733 was the epitome of what I hoped an American car company would build someday; a big, powerful, road burner that involved the driver, not isolated them from the experience of driving. I opted for a two year old Coupe de Ville instead, while my brother bought a new 320i. So I had a chance to get familiar with the BMW concept of how a driving machine should function.
I have a lot of respect for these early BMWs and hoped that someday Cadillac could build a car like that. It took a long time, but Cadillac finally did.
Just for laughs I took a look at the BMW site to see what the 7 Series looks like now.
Hideous. And they want $100,000 for it.
I figured my automotive curriculum vitae wouldn’t be complete without owning a BMW, so when I found a very nice 2013 335i convertible at the local dealer I scratched the itch. This was the final year of the origami metal folding roof, and the fact that it was a manual transmission car was the clinch. The roof never gave a lick of trouble. (It took a bit of time to trace the EVAP system warning though. which turned out to be rodent-gnawed wiring insulation with a soy base.)
The rodents – of which I have many – have largely left my BMW alone. But that’s perhaps because they have had much more tasty Toyotas and Hondas to chew on at my house. They do love their Hondas….
I admire your choice of an E93 in the face of a somewhat fragile engine (relative to a N52) and the complexity of that top. Good thing that your car has been trouble-free. Aside from the horror stories I read about what can go wrong, I absolutely love the idea of a hard top convertible.
Incidentally, but perhaps of interest: The “D” in the VIN indicates that this car was assembled (not in Munich, but) in the Dingolfing factory.
A vehicle built in Munich would have an A, F or K instead.
I havent seen a live example for a while, I was offered a BMW 7 series 6 cylinder car whole free from a guy I bought a parts Minx from it had electrical problems so no thanks it was more demo derby grade car than something worth fixing.
So, no inseams today, but we do get this: “(my) magic 8-ball was…now practically shaking itself and flashing “Most Def” at me to release this thing from my files”. It’s getting obscene, I tell you.
Oh! “my files”: my apologies, I read “my flies”. Ahem. Moving on.
This is an incredible find, let alone as the turbo. Old 7-series have gone from occasionally-seen to non-existent now: maybe a car-clubber has one here or there, a curio for the interested. They had a dodgy name from new for electrical reliability, and an indifferent one (in this country) for long-distance use (too roary on our odd ashphalt, too hard in ride and seats). They’ve always looked a bit back-heavy, and though I’ve always loved that dashboard, they’re close to being a tad bland to look at. Still quite desirable, though.
I’d hazard that this intact oldie eventually expired of respectable old age, a proper engine fail or somesuch. That mileage is huge, so either Mr Securities keep it going, or, more likely, someone next who knew how to give it the self-help it needed.
Gosh, is it 745 already?
How fitting to find a grey market car in that very colour. The other day, I finally saw a Toyota Aqua (that’s the JDM name for the Prius C) in a light blue-green hue and had the same feeling of serendipity.
I’m even more impressed by how well the wooden bits have weathered the past four decades. A grey market Schwarzwald special. That’s a find and a half. Or ever three quarters.