BMW i8 - long-term review

A couple of years ago Top Gear mag turned 30. Aged better than any of its journos, let me tell you. Anyway, as part of our celebrations we asked our presenters and writers, both past and present, to nominate the greatest car of the last 30 years.

Well it’ll no doubt stagger you to learn that above the third placed Lotus Elise and the Bugatti Veyron in second, the BMW i8 emerged victorious. Let’s muse for a second on why that might be. First and foremost it’s two things that send us jurors wild: a) it’s ground-breaking and b) it’s that rarest of things, a ground-breaking sports car.

No-one takes risks with sports cars, but here was BMW investing billions into a car it had little evidence that anyone would buy. It was a complete step into the unknown. Other firms that had given hybrid a passing nod (most notably the Holy Trinity) had used it to boost performance. What no-one had risked was downsizing the engine. But here was BMW putting a three cylinder 1.5 from a Mini into its flagship £100k sports car. Embedding it into a carbon fibre chassis with butterfly doors, no less.

BMW’s i project was fantastically bold, exactly the kind of radical, innovative engineering you hope the world will embrace, but seldom does. And so it proved, on sale from 2014 until 2020, only 20,645 were built. Porsche was selling 50 per cent more 911s than that every year.

Fortunately for me, this scarcity hasn’t manifested itself in high residual values. A 2017 Porsche 911 with 50,000 miles will set you back around £55,000. An i8? Not much more than half that, it turns out. I’ll leave you to do the Googling there - hopefully you’ll come away as tempted as I was. Because surely, at some stage, these have got to become desirable?*

So yeah, I’ve bought an i8. I cross shopped it with the sensible (Golf GTI) and the tempting (Audi R8), but I needed a car I could use every day. Had to be grey, or better still, silver, had to have the blue exterior accents and I wanted a light interior.

What to watch for when buying an i8? Is it still on its original 12v battery, because if it fails it can have a knock on into the hybrid system. And check the AC compressor, because it’s also crucial for battery cooling - you don't want the lithium ion getting too hot. So naturally I bought the first car that was the right colour and spec. It’s got a clean bill of health according to the service log, and that’s good eonuhg ofr em. Sorry. Hard to type with fingers crossed.

So what’s it going to be like running a decade-old hybrid full of cutting edge technology? I’m hoping it’s going to have aged as well as Top Gear mag, rather than it’s new custodian.

*Do not take investment advice from this man