BMW i8

The BMW i8 arrived in 2014 looking like a concept car that forgot to stay on the show stand. Scissor doors, a carbon-fibre passenger cell, flying buttress roofline — and a 1.5-litre three-cylinder engine. BMW had a point to make, and it made it loudly.

The powertrain pairs that turbocharged three-cylinder (228 hp) with an electric motor driving the front wheels, for a combined system output of 362 hp in later models. The carbon fibre Life Module keeps weight to around 1,485 kg despite all the technology on board, and 0–100 km/h takes 4.4 seconds — with an electronically limited top speed of 250 km/h. In pure electric mode, range sits around 50 km; plug it in overnight and you can do most urban driving without touching the engine.

A car ahead of its time

When the i8 launched, plug-in hybrid sports cars were largely theoretical. BMW built 20,000 of them over six years, making it the world's best-selling plug-in electric sports car by a comfortable margin. That's an easy fact to forget now that every manufacturer has a hybrid performance variant, but in 2014 it was a genuinely bold bet.

Production ran until June 2020, which means every i8 now in existence is already a future classic. The combination of striking design, low production numbers, and genuine technological significance has BMW's own historians describing it as a landmark model — something they rarely do while the body panels are still warm.

In the garage

In red, the i8 has a presence that's hard to photograph accurately. It's wider and lower in person than any image suggests. The gullwing doors remain a conversation piece every single time, regardless of how many times you've seen them open. And the exhaust note — a synthesised, theatrical sound piped into the cabin — is either charming or an affront to purists, depending entirely on your prior exposure to purely electric cars.

There's also something quietly satisfying about a car this dramatic parked next to a classic Triumph TR4. Different eras. Same idea: build something that makes driving worth doing.