BMW i8 // £58,000–£90,000
Fours years on and still in a class of one Tiny fuel tank, frequent stops
Early adopters tend to have a few quid in the bank, a fscal cushion that smooths the transition to new technology before the rest of us pile in. Factor in the immutable truth that few things date as surely as a carmaker’s vision of the future, and that’s the i8 conundrum in a carbonfbre nutshell. But how does £58k and 39k miles sound? Better, huh?
BMW’s billion-pound venture into hybridised high-performance has proven neither the folly some predicted or the game-changer the company hoped. Four years into its life – Jeez, that went quickly – we’d argue that Benoit Jacob’s exterior design has lost precisely none of its capacity to dazzle, even if the dihedral doors and chunky sills make dignifed entry and egress impossible. Once you’re ensconced, the i8 defes the odds to still feel genuinely futuristic. Either BMW got it bang-on, or everyone else is dragging their heels. It communicates its mission via purposely thinner materials – including the windscreen – the pulsing blue glow of its instruments, and that spooky near-silence on start-up which is characteristic of all EVs.
It’s a seductive experience, especially in urban areas, as is the promise of 134mpg and 49 CO s. Needless to say, you haven’t a snowball’s of getting near that in the real world, but an overall average of 40mpg is realistic, and 50 achievable if you meter your right foot carefully on motorway runs and stick to EcoPro mode (the i8 defaults to less holy Comfort mode).
Then there’s the way it goes. For all its synthetic qualities, the powertrain – 1.5-litre, 228bhp turbo’d triple with integrated e-motor making an additional 129bhp, and 420 torques overall – is as characterful as any conventional atmospheric ICE we can think of, short of a Ferrari V12. Its relative lack of mass (1,535kg) and the internals’ lowered centre of gravity are also palpable. Yes, an R8 or 911 are more old-school fun, but the i8 is… brainy with it.
One we found... Heady days. Early i8s, showing circa 20k miles, are now typically £58,000– £65,000. The cheapest we found was £57,995 with 39,000 miles.