Curbside Recycling: 1983 BMW 745i – Boosted Bahn Brenner

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.