Columnists ,Andrew Frankel
FEB 10th 2020
Andrew Frankel

Andrew Frankel

The BMW i8 was the perfect car at the wrong time – Thank Frankel it’s Friday (Monday Special)

Imagine if you were a car manufacturer with a great reputation, and you produced an amazing looking coupe. And you made it from the very latest, state of the art materials to ensure it was both exceptionally light and strong. And then you went to even greater than usual lengths to make sure its build quality was not merely good, but genuinely exceptional. And you equipped it with a sweet sounding, powerful powertrain which was somehow also small, frugal and with incredibly low emissions. What if you could plug this car into the mains and do your commute on electricity alone? What if this car was absolutely an answer to so many of the questions faced today, and was the most smart, relevant and ahead of its time machine of the modern era? Buyers would form a queue. Right?

Apparently not. For the last five years BMW has been making just such a car, it’s called the i8 and it has announced that it is ending production. It will not be replaced. And if you want further evidence that this car has not been the success BMW hoped, look at the second hand market.

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