BMW 8 SERIES 850i 2dr (1990)

BMW 850i - Originally bought for a laugh, actually really loving it now

Me and my partner had a bit of a win on the Lottery a couple of years ago, nothing big really, just a few thousand, but we thought we'd use it to get a car. We were in a bit of a silly mood because of the win, I mean because it was a lot but also because it wasn't actually all that much in the scheme of things, so we had a sort of comical look at old second hand BMWs and Mercs and things, seemed a fitting balance! It started off as just a fun thing and we never would have shopped around carefully for weeks searching for just the right thing, but then we saw the BMW 8 Series and really sort of got a bit hooked. It looks really sort of fun and old but new, kind of nerdy in a really quite cool sort of way. Weird really, but fun all the same. This one was red too, so it added to the fun.

We got inside a BMW 850i and it really began to feel like a pretty fancy car, I kept having to double back on the price tag on it, only £2000!! I mean it had well over 100 thousand miles on the clock at the time, I forget exactly how much, but still, I think these went for easily 20 times that new, probably more.

So we were sitting in it and playing around with the electric height adjustment on the seats and things. The dealer probably clocked us for a couple of idiots with no way of buying the thing, but seemed to humour us by showing us the way the car can remember settings for different drivers, not just the height of the seat but the mirrors too. We have found that useful since, as we're quite different heights. Having said that neither one of us is all that tall, nor are our kids, and it does look like it might be a bit cramped for a tall person, especially in the back.

We bought the BMW 850i after being shown a load of other fun stuff inside it, and especially the aircon which I don't think we could have got anywhere else on our budget. We've loved it now for a couple of years and it doesn't show any other signs of ageing. There was one thing with the electrics last year but nothing big. I think the brakes might need doing soon, but there doesn't seem to be anything big going wrong. Fingers crossed and touch wood!