BMW 8-Series

BMW M850i xDrive £99,525

WE SAY: IS THIS A MASSIVELY EXPENSIVE 4-SERIES OR A BARGAIN RIVAL TO A BENTLEY CONTINENTAL GT?

Maybe I got out of bed the wrong side, but I’m driving along in this glamorous new £100,000 BMW, and I’m thinking Vauxhall Cascada. See, among reasonably priced four-seat convertibles, the Cascada was quite a fine-looking thing, and good at its job. But it was a sales stinker. People associated Vauxhall with the learner’s Corsa, and instead paid a little more to get into a BMW 2-Series cabrio.

Now the 8-Series. If the target buyers associate BMW with the rep’s 320d, they’ll pay a little more and get a Bentley Continental instead. People always feel inclined – and not just with cars – to prefer the cheapest thing from an expensive range over the dearest thing from a cheap range. In the 2-Series convertible, BMW was the beneficiary, but in the 8-Series it might just be the victim.

Get in, thumb the ignition and the visible 8-Series displays, switches and software are exactly what you’ll find in a highly optioned 2019 3-Series: the same iDrive and switchgear, the same virtual instruments, the head-up display, the advanced driver assist. This stuff, of course, works vastly better than what’s in the high-end brands like Aston Martin or McLaren. The 8’s leather is beautifully stitched and its door furniture and dash architecture are jazzier than in the related saloons, but fact is it just doesn’t feel unique or (overused word, sorry) exclusive.

Outside, it wears the stentorian new face of BMW, more angular and big-grilled than ever. The sides are sculpted and chiselled and the rear shoulders broad. The roof, optionally carbonfibre, has a double-bubble section and tapers away almost from the top of the windscreen. Fine elements in themselves. But the combination is more striking than it is graceful.

The engine merits both those adjectives, depending on what you’re doing with the pedal. It’s not the full-fat M5 job, but rather a cleaner-running and heavily powered-up version of BMWs ‘regular’ 4.4-litre V8 – and its 530bhp and epic thrust are absolutely nothing to be sneezed at. The upper half of its rev band is solid nourishment, albeit without the audible spice of the M V8, or AMG’s. Lower down in

the revs, its manners are nicely discreet for below-the-radar mooching.

All wheels are both driven and steered as standard, and the damping is adaptive. For good measure, the test M850i had the optional active anti-roll too, and all four of those systems alter their thresholds in harmony as you switch to the sport modes. In full cry, it’ll chomp its way down a difficult road at a crazed rate without batting an eyelid. Clearly, a lot is going on down there to shepherd and marshal the 1.9 tonnes, but from your seat the effort is well disguised. Better yet, it doesn’t feel artificial – it’s just like a wellsorted car a couple of hundred kilos lighter.

Then it started raining, and I realised that the sports-mode front/rear torque distribution is entertainingly unfair. Even in the medium traction-control mode, this can be a snaky customer. Fun if you have the space, or else switch back to the protective modes and it’s super-secure.

I’d have felt even more confident if the steering carried a little less squidge and a little more feedback. There’s nothing wrong with its gearing, but even once you’re on lock it always carries an initial softness. I guess next year’s M8 will be sharper, but for now the M850i is a GT and maybe this isolation is deliberate.

Well, the M850i is a brilliant GT, fast and supportive and relaxing on the long highways but entertaining when you take an off-ramp for a stimulating detour. (The engineers promise that the twinned cabrio will be just as good to drive, and still civilised roof-up.)

Just don’t get stuck in the back. Those seats are tiny, but the payback is a usefully deep boot as well as that sloping roof. There’s plenty of useful storage around the front cockpit. Welljudged packaging choices.

The M850i is full of those carefully arranged compromises. It’s intensively optimised for a certain group of prosperous individuals. But passionless box-ticking might not be enough. BMW hasn’t done many 8s in its history, but when it has – 850CSi, Z8, i8 – they’ve crackled with more character and been more distinct from the other BMWs of their eras.

“It’ll chomp down a difficult road at a crazed rate without batting an eyelid”