Photo: Catalin Garmacea
Notice all the people in the picture above. They were protesting against the horrors of pollution, so we decided to swap our Porsche 911 tester with a BMW i8. OK, we’re kidding here, but the point is that we can’t stop comparing the two. And doing it is wrong.
As we discovered after driving the i8, the two are so different that throwing them at each other doesn’t make as much sense as it might seem at first. For one thing, the Zuffenhausen machine is the most traditional “volume” sportscar you can buy in a showroom while the i8 is a time portal that aims to rush the future into the present.
The i8 is larger than the 911 and while you can definitely feel this up front, the rear seats are just as useless when it comes to accommodating adults.
Our biggest question before sampling the i8 regarded the overall feeling of the car. Can this petrol-electric Frankenstein get all its bits together and deliver the organic experience expected of any sportscar?
Yes it can, it’s just that the i8 has its own acceptance of the term “organic”. Sure, at the limit, this BMW isn’t quite responsive enough, but it manages to wrap you in a new kind of fast driving experience that is entertaining.
We’ve always enjoyed playing with hybrids to see how our driving style can affect the efficiency. This isn’t a financial matter at all. It’s just like when you’re engaged in a gaming session on your computer - you don’t enter the dark room to save power on your monitor, but thanks to the excitement it promises.
The i8 mixes all this with a respectably fast experience, and so it manages to strongly involve its driver, despite all the technology sitting between you and the road.
We found the i8’s behaviour inside the city just as interesting, but we’ll go deeper down this road in our BMW i8 review.
We did find a pair of rather amusing similarities though:
Despite the i8 using... well... about half the combustion engine of a 911, the soundtrack of the BMW’s turbocharged 1.5-liter engine isn’t too far from what we’ve heard while driving Porsches.The i8 is larger than the 911 and while you can definitely feel this up front, the rear seats are just as useless when it comes to accommodating adults.
Is the i8 organic?
Our biggest question before sampling the i8 regarded the overall feeling of the car. Can this petrol-electric Frankenstein get all its bits together and deliver the organic experience expected of any sportscar?
Yes it can, it’s just that the i8 has its own acceptance of the term “organic”. Sure, at the limit, this BMW isn’t quite responsive enough, but it manages to wrap you in a new kind of fast driving experience that is entertaining.
We’ve always enjoyed playing with hybrids to see how our driving style can affect the efficiency. This isn’t a financial matter at all. It’s just like when you’re engaged in a gaming session on your computer - you don’t enter the dark room to save power on your monitor, but thanks to the excitement it promises.
The i8 mixes all this with a respectably fast experience, and so it manages to strongly involve its driver, despite all the technology sitting between you and the road.
We found the i8’s behaviour inside the city just as interesting, but we’ll go deeper down this road in our BMW i8 review.
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