Hello Gents, fans of the BMW 8-series
just to introduce 8Coupe and the team running the site.
8Coupe.com has been online and serving the 8er community for more than a decade now and has publicly available tons of stats, nice-to-knows and useless trivia covering the entire production of the E31 8-series.
In addition to the information on the web site we also host an 8er owner register with currently more than 2500 car & owner combos.
The biggest part is the 8-series archive where to date more than 11.500 of the 30k produced cars are accounted for - most of them by way of pictures found on the internet, sales ads and owner contributions. Within the archive we have in excess of 200k pictures and near 20k copies of sales ads etc.
All this data has been collected throughout the past decade and a bit. The site was devised, installed and maintained by US 8er owners and became a Germany/US joint venture in 2010.
We do collect every snippet - old and new - that we can find and assign to a VIN number (last 7 digits). In some countries (e.g. US, UK, Japan) VIN numbers are either openly displayed or can be extracted from public databases via the car registration. In other countries we have to rely on visuals and can often ID the cars by their set of order options. In special cases where standard sets of options make it impossible to correctly ID the car we just ask...
To cut this introduction short - South Africa is a country with a special E31 history and rather inaccessible in terms of finding and ID´ing cars on the market.
Below a few figures relating to South Africa bound E31 shipments between 1990 and 1999:
V12 engines
M70 (5.0) RHD 6-spd: 15 imported (Dec. 1990 - Jun. 1992) + 4 (Dec. 1990 - Mar. 1992, see further down) = 19
M70 (5.0) RHD Auto: 43 imported (Sep. 1990 - Oct. 1991) + 20 (24) (Feb. 1991 - Feb. 1993, see further down) = 63 (67)
M70 (5.0) LHD Auto: 3 (CB00139, CB06720, CB09589 - possibly diplomatic sales)
M70 (5.0) LHD NA 6-spd: 3 (CB42016, CB42018, CB42090 - since moved to NA (North America))
M73 (5.4) LHD: none, this car was not manufactured as RHD
S70 (5.6) LHD CSi: 1 (CC02138)
S70 (5.6) RHD CSi: 1 (CC88155)
V8 engines:
M60 (4.0) 6-spd: 1 (CC11085)
M60 (4.0) Auto: 1 (CB97000, prototype)
M62 (4.4) 6-spd: none, only 3 produced as RHD
M62 (4.4) Auto: 1 (CC66408)
In total less than 100 E31´s came to South Africa by way of their purchase order. Of course an unknown number of imported vehicles have made it into ZA since.
Amongst the RHD M70 V12´s you can see that a certain amount has been separated out of the entire shipment.
The reason for this is known to you as the BMW Rosslyn plant.
During the time of production of the E31 BMW decided to set up an alternative to their Dingolfing, Germany facilities and assemble at least parts of the E31 production in their Rosslyn based plant from CKD (Completely Knocked Down) kits. For this purpose an initial team of three workers ex-Dingolfing was assigned to train another 3 workers from Rosslyn in the assembly of the crated kits coming from Germany. During these times of political instability in ZA the three teams managed to assemble a total of 24 (28) M70 based 850´s which were assigned the type codes EG18 (6-spd) and EG28 (Auto) where the trailing 8 was used to indicate South African specs (EG11/21 = ECE LHD, EG12/22 = ECE RHD, EG13/23 = NA LHD).
As all of you will likely know BMW has made available to the South African market a few unique vehicles not available elsewhere e.g. the 333i (E30) or the M88 engined 745i (E23). Most of these cars today are rather well documented and numerous cars of the respective series (333i, 745i each ca. 210 produced) ar known to have survived and remain in good nick.
What about the 24 (maybe 28) 850´s from Rosslyn though?
We do have a basic set of build data sheets issued for 27 VIN numbers - three thereof we tag with question marks, a possible #28 has gone missing completely. We do have a few pictures from the production site showing at least a few cars during assembly and that almost sums up our knowledge of the Rosslyn production.
We know of 2 Rosslyn-made survivors owned by a gent in Johannesburg who has since tagged his CB92019 for sale, see: http://cars.brick7.co.za/bmw/8/807256.html
What we don´t have is exact specs for all of the cars. Back in the early 90´s computers were something really futuristic and in many places their use lay years ahead. There was no sign of the internet as we know and use it today, hence the communications back then relied in most cases on things as simple as a pen and a piece of paper
With Rosslyn being more than 5.000 miles away from back home in Munich it is not much of a surprise that data collected and assembled not always made it into one of the computer systems in Germany.
This is where I am looking for assistance in the South African BMW community. I´d like to ask everyone keen to assist spotting an 8 to check for the car´s VIN, take pictures, talk to owners...get in touch.
UK imports usually have a VIN tag on the dashboard just in front of the driver as shown here:
If this is not the case, the standard location for a VIN tag always is underneath the (RHD) driver side wiper - best seen with a torch and hood closed (unfortunately it is usually dirt on black over black).
Pic above taken from LHD car, different orientation of wipers to RHD!
ZA spec cars have a metal plaque inside the engine compartment at the mounting point of the right fender along with stamping on the right shock tower.
Since 8Coupe.com collects information of all 8ers it doesn´t matter if we receive information about cars already known - the important point is to get things going and chase down whatever can still be found.
Whoever is interested in learning more about the 8 please hop over to 8coupe.com and use the contact form or post a question in here. I hope that the BB system will relay postings to us.
Please by all means duplicate and spread this information to other ZA 8-series driver hangouts!
Thanks and see ya!
Reinhard
Registrar
8Coupe.com
just to introduce 8Coupe and the team running the site.
8Coupe.com has been online and serving the 8er community for more than a decade now and has publicly available tons of stats, nice-to-knows and useless trivia covering the entire production of the E31 8-series.
In addition to the information on the web site we also host an 8er owner register with currently more than 2500 car & owner combos.
The biggest part is the 8-series archive where to date more than 11.500 of the 30k produced cars are accounted for - most of them by way of pictures found on the internet, sales ads and owner contributions. Within the archive we have in excess of 200k pictures and near 20k copies of sales ads etc.
All this data has been collected throughout the past decade and a bit. The site was devised, installed and maintained by US 8er owners and became a Germany/US joint venture in 2010.
We do collect every snippet - old and new - that we can find and assign to a VIN number (last 7 digits). In some countries (e.g. US, UK, Japan) VIN numbers are either openly displayed or can be extracted from public databases via the car registration. In other countries we have to rely on visuals and can often ID the cars by their set of order options. In special cases where standard sets of options make it impossible to correctly ID the car we just ask...
To cut this introduction short - South Africa is a country with a special E31 history and rather inaccessible in terms of finding and ID´ing cars on the market.
Below a few figures relating to South Africa bound E31 shipments between 1990 and 1999:
V12 engines
M70 (5.0) RHD 6-spd: 15 imported (Dec. 1990 - Jun. 1992) + 4 (Dec. 1990 - Mar. 1992, see further down) = 19
M70 (5.0) RHD Auto: 43 imported (Sep. 1990 - Oct. 1991) + 20 (24) (Feb. 1991 - Feb. 1993, see further down) = 63 (67)
M70 (5.0) LHD Auto: 3 (CB00139, CB06720, CB09589 - possibly diplomatic sales)
M70 (5.0) LHD NA 6-spd: 3 (CB42016, CB42018, CB42090 - since moved to NA (North America))
M73 (5.4) LHD: none, this car was not manufactured as RHD
S70 (5.6) LHD CSi: 1 (CC02138)
S70 (5.6) RHD CSi: 1 (CC88155)
V8 engines:
M60 (4.0) 6-spd: 1 (CC11085)
M60 (4.0) Auto: 1 (CB97000, prototype)
M62 (4.4) 6-spd: none, only 3 produced as RHD
M62 (4.4) Auto: 1 (CC66408)
In total less than 100 E31´s came to South Africa by way of their purchase order. Of course an unknown number of imported vehicles have made it into ZA since.
Amongst the RHD M70 V12´s you can see that a certain amount has been separated out of the entire shipment.
The reason for this is known to you as the BMW Rosslyn plant.
During the time of production of the E31 BMW decided to set up an alternative to their Dingolfing, Germany facilities and assemble at least parts of the E31 production in their Rosslyn based plant from CKD (Completely Knocked Down) kits. For this purpose an initial team of three workers ex-Dingolfing was assigned to train another 3 workers from Rosslyn in the assembly of the crated kits coming from Germany. During these times of political instability in ZA the three teams managed to assemble a total of 24 (28) M70 based 850´s which were assigned the type codes EG18 (6-spd) and EG28 (Auto) where the trailing 8 was used to indicate South African specs (EG11/21 = ECE LHD, EG12/22 = ECE RHD, EG13/23 = NA LHD).
As all of you will likely know BMW has made available to the South African market a few unique vehicles not available elsewhere e.g. the 333i (E30) or the M88 engined 745i (E23). Most of these cars today are rather well documented and numerous cars of the respective series (333i, 745i each ca. 210 produced) ar known to have survived and remain in good nick.
What about the 24 (maybe 28) 850´s from Rosslyn though?
We do have a basic set of build data sheets issued for 27 VIN numbers - three thereof we tag with question marks, a possible #28 has gone missing completely. We do have a few pictures from the production site showing at least a few cars during assembly and that almost sums up our knowledge of the Rosslyn production.
We know of 2 Rosslyn-made survivors owned by a gent in Johannesburg who has since tagged his CB92019 for sale, see: http://cars.brick7.co.za/bmw/8/807256.html
What we don´t have is exact specs for all of the cars. Back in the early 90´s computers were something really futuristic and in many places their use lay years ahead. There was no sign of the internet as we know and use it today, hence the communications back then relied in most cases on things as simple as a pen and a piece of paper
With Rosslyn being more than 5.000 miles away from back home in Munich it is not much of a surprise that data collected and assembled not always made it into one of the computer systems in Germany.
This is where I am looking for assistance in the South African BMW community. I´d like to ask everyone keen to assist spotting an 8 to check for the car´s VIN, take pictures, talk to owners...get in touch.
UK imports usually have a VIN tag on the dashboard just in front of the driver as shown here:
If this is not the case, the standard location for a VIN tag always is underneath the (RHD) driver side wiper - best seen with a torch and hood closed (unfortunately it is usually dirt on black over black).
Pic above taken from LHD car, different orientation of wipers to RHD!
ZA spec cars have a metal plaque inside the engine compartment at the mounting point of the right fender along with stamping on the right shock tower.
Since 8Coupe.com collects information of all 8ers it doesn´t matter if we receive information about cars already known - the important point is to get things going and chase down whatever can still be found.
Whoever is interested in learning more about the 8 please hop over to 8coupe.com and use the contact form or post a question in here. I hope that the BB system will relay postings to us.
Please by all means duplicate and spread this information to other ZA 8-series driver hangouts!
Thanks and see ya!
Reinhard
Registrar
8Coupe.com
