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In Reply to: I would like to know as well :-)) posted by KC on December 03, 1999 at 20:35:15:
Will anyone be able to expalin CSI CI CS I and any other combinations that are used with the 850 and what years.
BMW's 8-series cars (internal platform code E31) featured four models: the 850i, the 850Ci, the 850CSi and the 840Ci. (Note that these models numbers are properly written using upper and lower case letters.)
The last two digits of the model number provide a rough approximation of displacement in liters. So the 850s all displaced about 5 liters, divided into 12 cylinders. (To be precise, the 850i was fitted with the M7B50 engine displacing 5.0 liters and the 850Ci was fitted with the M73B54 engine displacing 5.4 liters.) The 840s all displaced about 4 liters using a V-8 powerplant. (the engine code escapes me this morning.) Again, this number is not exact as BMW frequently figures "close enough" when it come to the last two digits of model designations.
The "i" signifies "injected" as in fuel-injected. Of course, by the time the 850i was introduced in 1991 virtually every car was fuel-injected, so it seems a bit silly to choose that rather mundane attribute on an $80,000 car to memorialize in the model number. But that's what BMW did.
The "Ci" signifies "coupe, injected." Again, BMW is stating the obvious. My theory is that when they revamped the 850i in 1993 they had to call it *something* different, so they fell back to 850Ci.
Finally, the "CSi" stands for "coupe, sport, injected" to signify that this is the model of the E31 that has benefited from all the usual performance-enhancing modifications performed by the folks at BMW's Motorsports operation. I suppose BMW might have called it an //M8, but for some reason they chose not to do so. I have read sketchy reports that the Motorsports people proposed a "true" //M8, but BMW declined to produce it because it would have been too costly. If that's the case, it must have been VERY costly, because the MSRP for the 850CSi was comfortably in excess of $100,000. Beyond that hearsay story, I'll let the CSi Cognoscenti like Mr. Castle opine further.
Paul Michael Brown
Moderator, E31 Owners E-mail List
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