Owners have filed 8 complaints on the BMW 850i, covering 1991–1991. The system named most often is Exterior Lighting (5 reports). Worst years by volume: 1991; cleanest: 1991. On average the car was 8.4 years old when the problem happened.
What breaks on BMW 850i
Grouped by the system owners named — percentages are shares of all 8 850i complaints. Open any row for the full reports in owners' own words.
Exterior Lighting 5 Read
Headlight housing broken. Points downward
After failure, bmw tells you to buy new headlight buckets for $650 with new adjusters in them, which will fail again after two to four years, depending on the mileage. After failure the lights shine extremly low without covering the street in front of you, resulting in a real safety hazard
Both headlight adjustment mechaisms have repeatedly failed. This is an ongoing complaint with bmw 8 series owners. When the adjustment mechanism fails the headlight buckets point downwards so that the amount of road visible to the driver is 25 feet or less. Bmw has a "fix" for this which consists of "peening" a…
Service Brakes 1 Read
Brakes continue to fail almost resulting in an accident
Engine And Engine Cooling 1 Read
This car loses coolant, overheats, and blows a head gasket, and now possibly needs new cylinder heads. Bmw mechanic states that the temperatute gauge is not supposed to tell you the engine is overheating if the coolant has already completely leaked out of the system. That the gauge does not register the empty air in a…
Air Bags 1 Read
Started my bmw 850i, drive half a block down the street, the airbag blow , burn my hands. I can take picture of the broken airbag in the steering wheel if needed
850i years to avoid — and the clean ones
Complaints per model year. More reports usually means more cars on the road as well as more trouble, so read the crash and fire columns alongside the count.
| Model year | Complaints | Top system | Crashes | Fires |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1991 | Air Bags | — | — |
The same model year, different builds
Every complaint carries the first 11 characters of the VIN — plant, year, body and engine. That is a production series, and complaints are spread across them very unevenly.
| Measure | Value |
|---|---|
| Distinct production series | 6 |
| Average complaints per series | 1.3 |
| Worst single series | 2 complaints |
| Average age at failure | 8.4 years |
A model average of 1.3 hides a worst series at 2. Enter a VIN above to see the numbers for that exact build instead of the model as a whole.
Owners reported these. Find out if yours is one of them.
- Complaints matched to the exact production run, not just the model
- What the car is worth given what tends to fail on it
- The original window sticker and factory options
- Full research report as a PDF for the pre-purchase inspection
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How we count
Every figure here comes from complaints owners filed with NHTSA — 1,100,006 of them, covering 1,982 models built between 1981 and 2026.
A complaint is an unverified report: someone wrote down what happened to their car. It is not a confirmed defect and not a recall. What makes the volume useful is the pattern — when thousands of owners of the same build describe the same failure, that is a signal no marketing brochure will give you.
Two things we do that the source does not. First, we compute the age of the car at the moment of failure from the incident date and the model year. Second, we group complaints by the first 11 characters of the VIN — the production series — so a bad plant run does not disappear into a model-wide average.
Frequently asked questions
What are the worst years for the 850i?
By complaint volume, 1991 drew the most owner reports. Bear in mind that popular years put more cars on the road, so check the crash and fire columns too.
Which 850i years are the cleanest?
1991 have the fewest complaints on file. For recent years that can simply mean the cars are young.
How many complaints does the BMW 850i have?
8 owner complaints filed with NHTSA, covering 1991–1991. Of those, 0 describe a crash and 0 a fire.
Are these complaints verified?
No. They are unverified reports from owners. NHTSA publishes them as filed and investigates only a fraction. The value is in the pattern, not in any single report.
Can I check complaints for one specific car?
Yes — enter its VIN above. We match the first 11 characters, which identify the plant, year, body and engine, so you get complaints on that exact production series rather than the whole model.