Eco Warrior, Sports Car, Icon Or Forgotten, How Will History Remember The BMW i8?

Life with a BMW i8 throws up all sorts of weird and wonderful juxtapositions. It's a sports car that's actually an eco warrior. A gullwinged, dramatically styled coupe that's also a four-seater well suited to school runs and trips to the shops.

This duality at its heart is endlessly fascinating and one of the reasons it's wriggled its way into my affections. There's never a dull journey in an i8.

One of the joys of working in an office like ours is the smorgasbord of interesting vehicles in the car park. Bauer Media also publishes most of Britain's motorcycling magazines, as well as a broad sweep of classic car titles and other specialist media such as Land Rover Owner.

TheSteve - 2/13/2017 5:55:22 PM

+2 Boost

How will the BMW i8 be remembered? As a footnote.

As another weird car that had some good ideas but never caught on commercially, had a short production run, and then silently slipped away into obscurity.

BMW will no doubt proclaim it to be a great success and a valuable learning exercise, as will hard-core BMW fans. Other less generous people will see it in less glowing terms, as an expensive vehicle without a meaningful market, and one that didn't quite "get it right."

I still think it looks like it's trying way too hard to get noticed and to be whatever it's trying to be.

mre30 - 2/13/2017 6:38:25 PM

-1 Boost

FORGOTTEN...

Unless BMW re-launches a version, called the M8 with the M760i's twin turbo V12 in it or at the very least the M5's engine. Else the could call it the M1 (I prefer M8)

BMW could sell 1,000 V12 M8's for Euro 300,000 or 500,000 each, no options, and it would be an instant collectible and quite a screamer.

Oh, by the way, the existence of a limited production V12 M8 would burnish the image of the i8, perhaps preventing it from being just a footnote.

MDarringer - 2/13/2017 6:50:26 PM

0 Boost

Pure footnote. There is nothing really special or redeeming about it.

It's styling is not a future classic.
It's handling isn't game changing.
It's performance isn't game changing.
It's not a disaster, but neither is it special.

valhallakey - 2/14/2017 12:47:12 AM

+1 Boost

I disagree with the above comments, I think in 15 years people will look back on the i8 as a sign of things to come in the "affordable" sports car world. Sure there were a few other bleeding edge sports cars from Porsche, Ferrari that combined electric/petrol power trains but they were exotica at exotica prices. I do think mre30 is on to something, perhaps a V12 would be too far away from the base concept and probably would require major re-engineering of the entire platform, however I bet they could squeeze an M3 engine in there for an iM8.