BMW i8 - long-term review

September 2014, and we had the very first BMW i8 in the UK for a showdown with its rivals. Here’s the conclusion I wrote.

“Many people have declared the i8 to not be as good a sports car as the Porsche 911. And they’re right. It’s not as good at the traditional sports car stuff as the 911. Because it’s not a traditional sports car and it’s not right to judge it as such. Instead it’s a car that open-minded people will come to from across the car-owning spectrum and the genius of it is that the biggest compromise they’ll have to make is that it’s a bit awkward to get in and out of.

"Would I have it over the 911? Whew, tricky one, but yes, I think I would – it feels as though BMW has redirected the whole sports car class. The ball is back in Porsche’s court.”

Hasn’t aged well has it? Back then, when the i8 was freshly minted, it looked like a new world of sports car possibilities was opening up and that downsized, electrically-boosted cars were going to be the future. 12 years further on and BMW’s i8 experiment is over, while Porsche’s most significant change to the 911 has been to fit it with turbochargers. Otherwise nothing has changed, the sports car market has sailed on and everyone who tried to do something different (think downsized AMGs and lightweight Alpines) got their fingers burned.

But no-one pushed as hard - nor invested so much - as BMW. The i8 was so radical, so clear and pure in its thinking and philosophy that BMW didn’t stop to think whether it would sell. It didn’t, so it died. Now, for Alpine, this second hand scarcity has manifested in super-strong residual values. Cars that were probably £45k new are still, seven years and 50,000 miles down the line, around £35,000.

The i8, as you’ll be well aware if you’ve read any more of these reports, has suffered far more. I’m assuming its complexity puts people off. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have similar thoughts myself, no matter how many times I’ve been told by BMW specialists that there’s very little to fear and that BMW was so determined to make it work that the ‘i’ cars were massively over-engineered and developed.

But what of the third car in that group test? Following conventional sports car wisdom, the Jaguar F-Type should be a complete winner. It’s the most traditional sports car you can design, a handsome front-engined, rear-drive coupe. With the option of a supercharged V8. And it’s also now dead.

Some cited its failure to adapt and modernise as the reason for its demise. The irony. And like the i8, used values are very attractive - V8s with similar age and mileage to mine are similar money, too (and way more expensive to run given £790 annual tax and 22mpg - just saying).

The truth of the matter seems to be that everyone else comes and goes, Porsche carries on regardless. I got it wrong with my forecasting, but right everywhere else. And yes, I did have it over a Porsche 911. Although it helped that it was half the price.