BMW's i8 is quite a few years old now, and many people say that "the car from the future" hasn't aged that well. However, it's still one of the most attention-grabbing German machines, and it's on that leg that this weird review stands.
No, really, there's a huge price gap between the expensive i8 and the ultra-expensive R8 Spyder. They also have very little in common other than being German and having yellow paint.
When BMW was designing the i8, back in the days of the original EfficientDynamics concept, it probably looked at the previous R8 and its massive V10 engines. It could have decided to make the M1 successor and challenge quattro with an out and out supercar.
But the Bavarian automaker instead opted to look into the future and see what's about to happen. Several years ago, BMW predicted this huge plug-in current we're swimming and chose electricity for the i8.
What's more, the powertrain is pretty unconventional. Electric motors powering the front are in no way connected to the 1.5-liter TwinPower Turbo engine at the back. In normal mode, there's no rev counter, and the motor is completely hidden. This is the Prius of sportscars.
The Audi R8, meanwhile, is a dinosaur juice burner. It doesn't seem to care about the environment and is content with making lots of sound on its way to the next corner. If you had put them up against each other, the R8 would have murdered the i8. And this isn't even the fastest model, as there's a coupe version with another 70 HP. But the drop-top experience makes sampling the 5.2-liter even easier.
We want to say that it comes down to choice. But really, the i8 isn't the attention-grabbing butterfly it once was. The R8, meanwhile, preserves its budget-Lambo status.
Mihnea's favorite cars have already been built, the so-called modern classics from the '80s and '90s. He also loves local car culture from all over the world, so don't be surprised to see him getting excited about weird Japanese imports, low-rider VWs out of Germany, replicas from Russia or LS swaps down in Florida. Full profile
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