From 1989 to 1999, BMW produced the 850i, a luxury-class coupé with almost all the technical ingredients that were feasible at the time and a silky-smooth twelve-cylinder engine at the front. Later, an eight-cylinder engine was also added. Around 30,000 of these elegant coupés were built and sold and they still look modern today, 25 years later. This report describes a driving impression and briefly describes the development history of the car, supplemented by historical and current photographs.