I purchase a 1985 635csi from my brother in law. The car originated in Canada and all gauges are metric. What was interesting about the car was that it was badged as an M car. At the time I was looking at the car I became suspicious that it was not correct. Tell tale signs included: the M insignia was on the drivers side on the trunk with the 635csi on the passenger side, the M Badge was on the passenger side of the grill, the motor had no M badging and the mirrors were chrome. It also had an M badged steering wheel. I de-badged the car when I bought the car four years ago. in looking at some pictures of e-24s I have come across some pictures where the rear and front badges were as mine had been. Can anyone shed light on this for me?
realoem.com lists all M635i's from '83-'89 as having the S38 engine; if your intake doesn't have individual throttle bodies & the stock M30 intake manifold instead, then it's not an M635csi. They're also listed as Euro-market, but I can't say I'd know if that would preclude Canadian-market bimmers of that era. All manner of M-Badges were available for purchase, so it would have been possible for them to be stuck anywhere. I believe if it came from BMW, it would be adjacent to and preceding the model trunk badging. I don't know offhand if M635csi's had grill badges stock or not - maybe. The steering wheel - who knows. I presume it might have been possible to get an M-badged steering wheel custom ordered with the car (you could try searching realoem.com for steering wheels and see if it shows an M-badged steering wheel available), but, for the pre-airbag era like that, presumably would have been easy to swap on an M-wheel from a US non-airbag M6, which were first here something like '85 or '86.
