San Francisco Street Sighting - 1990 BMW M3

It seems crazy to me that for 2015 the storied BMW M3 coupe will no longer exist. Yes, the M3 will still be offered as a sedan, and the M3 coupe has just changed its name to M4, reflecting BMW's new naming strategy of using even numbers for coupes. Whatever. It's all marketing. What the car does is what's important.

Danville Street Sighting - 1994 BMW 840Ci

I must say, the 1990s were very good to BMW. There aren't many brands that consistently produced good-looking cars throughout an entire decade. I love the E34 and E39 5 Series, E36 3 Series and E38 7 Series. Even the aging E30 and E32 still looked decent into the '90s, the early E46 3 Series was all right, and like it or hate it, the Z3 was the Z3. But one of my all time favorite Bimmers remains the E31 8 Series.

Oakland Street Sighting - 1967 BMW 2000CS

When I was a kid, my parents would drive me up into the Oakland hills to visit my grandmother. One house on a curve had a strange old car in the driveway, a very tired-looking white coupe with wraparound flush-mount headlamps and a BMW twin kidney grille and roundel logo. At my young age I knew old BMWs as having four round sealed-beam lights on the larger cars and two round lights on the 2002 coupes, but never had I seen one like that. Little did I know it was a New Class series coupe, a precursor to the E9 coupes I love so much today.

Santa Cruz Street Sighting - 1973 BMW 3.0S

Nowadays the BMW 7-Series is one of the standard choices in the luxury sedan class. But 40 years ago BMW was only a bit player in the United States, known primarily for motorcycles and the 2002 coupe and occasional sales of a four-door sedan based on the 2002's "New Class" platform. Buyers looking for a luxury coupe could get the E9 CS, either as the 2800CS or later the 3.0CS. The E9 was developed from the New Class, and in the late 1960s it gained a stablemate in the form of the New Six (E3) six-cylinder large luxury sedan.

San Ramon Street Sighting - 1977 BMW 630CSi

One of my favorite two-door luxury coupes is the BMW E24 6 Series. Curiously I always hated the E23 7 Series on which it was based, but felt that the styling lent itself very handsomely to a coupe.

San Francisco Street Sighting - 1971 BMW 3.0 CSi

I've long been a big fan of the BMW E9 series coupes, so it's only natural that I fell in love with this beautiful ice blue 3.0 CSi. The kicker is, no matter how much research I do on these cars, I can never seem to pinpoint the exact model year of most of them. The reason for this is, in Europe they'd design a car once and make minor changes as necessary to get it right. So most E9s look alike except for small details. Of course, US-market cars can be told apart by Federal side markers and other "safety" modifications from the original pure Teutonic design (such as the ghastly giant rubber bumpers of the 1974-75 models), but this is a Euro-market car. The fuel-injected 3.0 CSi was apparently never officially sold in the States, but was sold from 1971 to 1975 in Europe. This one is also decked out with Alpina goodies, like the popular spoked wheels (which I absolutely love on this car) and an Alpina shift knob. I'm not sure how crazy I am about the steering wheel, which I assume is original. I've seen pictures on the web of these cars with a wood-rimmed Nardi-style steering wheel, and I'm not sure if that was an improvement or not.

San Francisco Street Sighting - 1974 BMW 3.0 CS Automatic

Given my affinity for the E9 series BMW "New Six" coupes, I'm more than happy to feature another after the clean silver 1969-71 2800 CS model I posted two years ago. Since most of the CS coupes I see are in good condition, it makes me a little sad to see one sliding downhill. I'll be up-front about it, I first discovered this one while browsing Google Street View. Finding the real car, however, was a challenge as it was in a different location, so I consider it a legitimate street sighting. And besides, a low-resolution image on Google Maps is nothing compared to seeing the real thing up close.

San Francisco Street Sighting - 1972 BMW 2002 tii Touring

This is the first one of these I've ever seen in the flesh. It's a 1972 BMW 2002 tii I spotted across the street from City Hall in San Francisco. I was walking by and saw a familiar headlight and turn signal peeking out from a row of parked cars and said to myself, "Meh, just another 2002- waaaaaitaminute."

San Francisco Street Sighting - BMW 2800CS

These days one expects to see BMWs everywhere. I once sat down to dinner at a window table in a restaurant in my town and counted over 40 BMWs driving by during the meal. And I think I was only counting E46-generation 3 Series models. But once upon a time, BMW was just "one of those foreign cars" and most Americans aspired to own a Cadillac if they wanted luxury.