The Crawat Files – A Bagged & BBS’d E24 6-Series Coupe

As one of the busiest Automotive photographers on planet Earth, Mike seems to be accruing an incredible archive of machines, both new and old. Amidst the incredible features he sets up for the homepage, a slew of cars and mini-shoots here and there bubble to the surface. We lovingly refer to this extra body of work as "The Crawat Files," and our latest peer into Mike's archives reveals a gorgeous and firmly-planted E24 coupe.

The British have their hues of green, and the Italians have their reds. For the Germans, things are substantially more subdued: silver has long been the color of choice for race cars that hail from Deutschland, and as a result, so silver has become synonymous with marques like BMW, Audi, and Mercedes too. Maybe their choice of color stems from their equally flat sense of German humor, but decades later, it's hard to argue that silver paint isn't somehow perfectly fitting for cars bred from German engineering. It's pure, simple, and to the point, with no frills on the surface but incredible depth below. Thus, it's wonderfully fitting that the E24 635CSi at hand wears the lovely shade of Polaris silver, one of BMW's best.

In contrast, the flat metallic bronze centers of the BBS RFs add a splash of color to the coupe, and the enormous polished lips fill the arches to the brim. The E24 coupes are known for their wheel well capacity, allowing for a set of RFs to rival the best. Big stepped lips keep the period-correct wheel centers looking right at home, if not quite aggressive at the same time.

Air ride brings the big coupe down to earth, closing up the wheel gap and cementing the idea of what a big, luxurious gran touring coupe should be: comfortable, usable, and gorgeous, all at once. The silver paint helps to establish this ethos, and the end result is a big coupe we'd be thrilled to see on the streets of Belgium. Now, to see what else lies in the Crawat Files...