I’m not a BMW fan and I think I’ve made that clear during my time with the M3 & M4 over the past year. When I first laid eyes on the 8-series, however, I’ll admit I became conflicted, unsure about an instant attraction I felt for this charmingly slick vehicle.
BMW has gone and done a doozy with this one – the lines are sharper, the kidney grills considerably more chiselled – the 8 series might be the best looking BMW overall I’ve seen in recent memory.
Pillarless doors sit beneath a flowing roofline that can be traced exactly from point to point – nose to rear – and a rear that finally looks like it means business, finished by two gaping exhausts.
There’s no M8 on the cards as yet, so the 4.4-litre twin-turbo engine found in the M850i will have to do for now, but with 530hp and 750Nm of torque, it’s not a bad compromise at all. A 0-100 squirt of 3.7 seconds, for a car of its size, is surely worth the stamp of approval alone. There will be a turbodiesel option, but we’re not even going to give that the time of day in this article because, given EU regulations, we can only imagine it’ll be gone before it arrives.
The 8-series thankfully boasts an updated eight-speed Steptronic Sport gearbox that sends power to BMW’s xDrive four-wheel drive system, a system I welcome as a breath of fresh air over the M series’ seven-speed dual-clutch mechanisms.
The 8-series will be on sale in Europe in November, yet we can only speculate a 2019 launch here in Australia.
