Junkyard Gem: 1982 BMW 633CSi

The
E24 6 Series was one of the best-looking cars ever to grace a BMW showroom, and it was
the car for successful Californians with a sense of style— whether boardroom heroes or purveyors of not-so-legal substances— to show off their wealth and taste. The E24 is quite collectible now, but the cost of restoration for a worn-out one is so high that many solid examples end up here. I spotted this ’82 in a San Francisco Bay Area self-service yard last week.

The 3.2-liter straight-six engine in this car was rated at 181 horsepower, which was quite a bit in a year when a new Cadillac Eldorado had just 120hp and a Datsun 280ZX Turbo a mere 180.

There wasn’t much serious competition in 1982 for a powerful imported luxury coupe with gangsterish overtones. If you were a bent banker
treating your savings-and-loan as a personal cash machine in 1982, your mainstream choices were limited to this car, a
Mercedes-Benz 380SLC, or a
Jaguar XJ-S. For those who hit the big time, the
Ferrari 400i and
Rolls-Royce Camargue were available… but you’d see a hundred 633CSis for each of those in the wild.

What time is it? Time for The Crusher!

Related Video:

0 Comments