AutoTrader's Best Kept Secret: Why The BMW i8 Roadster is a Bargain Buy

hello everybody my YouTuber Chums and I are always talking about how to make a video a success and it's not quite as easy as you might think it's not just a case of getting a nice fancy Ferrari driving it about a bit and calling it a day no no no no to get people to really tune in you need a hook you need a great thumbnail and a great catchy title sometimes these things just write themselves other times it's a little more complicated but with this car I've got so much choice I could call it BMW's biggest mistake the best car you'll never buy autot Traders biggest barame the one the Germans got wrong or maybe even one of my personal favorites the cheapest Supercar you'll ever own although uh it's not a super car is it but you know what on balance I think to play it safe I'm going to call this Matt Armstrong buys broken Ferrari F50 yes that'll do anyway today I am driving for the first time the BMW i8 Roadster and as it happens it's a very interesting [Music] car every time I see an I8 out and about which let's face it is still something of an event I am shocked to remember that as a production car these are now nearly 10 years old yes this the Roadster only landed in 2018 but it shares its Core Design missing roof aside with the coupe that landed back in 2013 going on sale in 2014 it evolved from the old BMW Vision Dynamics concept which actually you can see very clearly was the setup for the I8 I actually then recall seeing what was I think by the time called the I8 conceptor much closer to production version of this car at the lobby of BMW over in Munich and I've got to say it wowed me then and it Wows me now the only real difference I can recall between that and this beyond the uh usual minor production ready tweaks was the fact that had some McLaren Center style clear door Pockets here which uh were pretty cool regard from the off the I8 was always a car that I think somewhat confused people because just to look at it you would say this is every inch super car 10 years on it's still a dramatic thing and you know I think if any BMW of the modern age has the potential to become a genuine future classic it's probably this one but as this was a car designed to be all about looking forwards rather than backwards rather than the traditional Supercar power plant of a nice high reving naturally aspirated engine this instead went for a hybrid setup bear in mind back in 2013 the word hybrid generally conjured up images of a Prius and just about nothing else the idea of a sexy one was still a very foreign concept Honda tried it with the CRZ but it didn't really work so at the back here you have a 1 and 1/2 lit three-cylinder producing 230 horsepower and that is a very close relative of that you'd find in the then new Mini up front you then have an electric motor making about 130 horsepower of its own and a battery pack of about 7 1/2 kwatt hours that gave you a rough electric only range of I think sort of you know 15 Mi give or take the chassis was arguably even more radical because the car was built on a carbon fiber tub which even today is still a very exotic way of doing things it's not the prettiest thing to Behold a VW xl1's chassis by comparison was was I think a little nicer to look at the finish here being just a little bit more Rough and Ready and maybe prototype looking but that I think has an appeal all of its own the car also had again rather unusually for a BMW double Wishbone suspension at the front and a multi-link at the rear the gearbox was then a six-speed torque converter automatic and on account of the fact that no matter how many times they tried to rejig the tests to make them more fair they never did the claimed fuel economy here was something like a 130 m to the gallon some tests I think actually showed even more but honestly they can be safely ignored in any case the car will actually do if you want it to about 42 the gallon and I can tell you it's also pretty quick the last time I drove one of these was not long after or even during the time I had my Lotus ivora 400 and that was a car that had 400 horsepower as you might imagine so a smidge more than this and weighed about 100 kilos less than than the coupe in theory you would think then that would make the Lotus the quicker car but no not at all put your foot down in this and it's good having driven both I can assure you this is no slouch and certainly quicker than the Lotus ever [Applause] felt but impressive numbers and turn of pace aside the I8 for me always had a few major failings the first of which was the fact that for me the interior failed to live up to the expectations set by the exterior on the outside it's still a super modern looking car but in here it feels largely like just about any other BMW of the day sure you've got a digital display here and another one up here but by modern standards both actually feel um well quite tiny and sure you've got these gorgeous butterfly doors but once you're inside the car you can't notice them and they're actually quite awkward to get in and out of these things particularly in Coupe guys they don't sound especially brilliant I mean it makes a noise but it's not one that anybody would choose to listen to and in Coupe form they have two I think essentially useless back seats I think they were really designed to appeal only to people that have children preferably small ones and my friend Ben from dadar I'm sure would love to have an I8 on his channel but for me the biggest issue with the I8 and one of the reasons I never bought one was the fact that the boot was piddly absolutely awful there is no storage up the front all you've got is this little cubby hole at the back that feels like you might just about get one airport carry-on in it and so uh you wind up in the situation where the nice eco-friendly everyday usable hybrid BMW is actually less practical than a lightweight stripped out hardcore Ferrari which doesn't make any sense whatsoever you then had the issue that the car was quick but when it came to a bend it wasn't really all that Keen to go around it because in this baffling quest to achieve some sort of Eco credentials BMW fitted it with tires that were too narrow and to be honest just not good enough this has 215 section wide items at the front and they are Bridgestone Potenza s1s they're just not good enough for doing this sort of stuff driving about normally in you know Comfort mode and whatnot with automatic engage they're uh perfectly fine and you know what the car is comfy it's decent and everything else but I know for a fact Chuck it into a bend and this thing will under steer like people tell you an old Audi does it just doesn't compute it's again another element that doesn't match the expectations set by the looks and also the performance when you put your foot down the final nail then in the coffin was the criminal depreciation the suffered and I really don't know whether it's a result of the pricing £15,000 for the coupe or the fact that yeah 370 horsepower is decent but not for 115 Grand the borderline unusable seats in the back that aren't really any better than those you'd get in an Aston or a 911 or maybe the fact that people just didn't want to pay for a BMW badge but I seem to recall that these lost something terrifying in the first sort of not even year but 6 months I remember seeing them in the showroom for like 70 odd Grand when they weren't even a year old that's that's nuts even more baffling was the fact BMW waited until 2018 before they made this the Roadster and what's particularly baffling is that having driven it now this is the car it should have always been what I really don't get is that despite the fact they built a sports car on a carbon fiber tub and part of the reason you do that is for extra rigidity apparently they never anticipated building one of these as a roadster this is in spite of the fact that one of the concepts for it was a roadster BMW don't really know how to do sports cars and when you hear about stuff like this it really does show the proof if it were required that the car wasn't built as a roadster comes in the fact that despite it is a carbon fiber tub and they are inherently fairly rigid they still did a fair bit of bracing to the chassis to stiffen it up for transition this added a bit of weight so where the regular car is already actually impressively light considering what's going on at about 1,550 kilos this is about 1,650 helping make up for this in a very small way was the fact that for 2018 so from the introduction of the Roadster onwards BMW gave the electric side of the hybrid system a bit of a reworking so you've got a slightly larger battery now giving you 11 1/2 KW of capacity which means your real world electric only range goes up to 20 something or other miles and you've also got a little more power from the motors too only about 12 horses or so bringing the grand total up to about 370 the thing you feel more is the torque figure which is about 420 lb ft that's a 540 Newton m in other words a lot and I've got to say because of those twin Power Systems working together it does respond pretty well the back seats were another casualty of the conversion though I have to say I really don't mind that at all and if anything it really adds to the specialness of this car having just the two seats fire less behind you and the wind in your hair oh it ramps up the experience quite a bit they also gave the car a frankly brilliant Roof System yes it is made out of denim which is as oddl looking as it is sounding but you know what the mechanism is fantastic smooth elegant and full of the sort of theatrics you want from a car like this they also mercifully did go to some effort to retain the butterfly doors another bit of much appreciated theater and with the roof down which you can do from the key it makes getting into one of these much easier the seats themselves are okay I mean they look nice enough and they're pretty comfy and to be honest the whole car is really really very usable rubbish space aside for the boot and now absence of rear seats I could drive this very happily over a long distance I'd love to do a road trip in it if I could take all my stuff which I can't its owner Adam is a bit of a serial car guy and honestly in that regard makes me look like a rank amateur in his time he has had hundreds of them and this is his third I8 the first was a coupe Then followed by a roadster Each of which were black and white and one of the unusual things about this particular car is it's not black on black as I first thought but instead gray on black and this to me takes away a little bit from the really striking styling that the car has but to be honest the shape is bold enough it can still pull it off it's still a good looking thing me I'd probably have it in either the white or that blue that I think a lot of them were specified in even if they did look a little bit like they were giving birth to a 911 despite having gone through a whole bunch of different cars including the famous Ferrari 345 series that's a 355 4556 and 550 he has found that the I8 provides a rather compelling combination of qualities Supercar looks Sports car performance and hatchback running costs everything that I know of the cars tells me that really is true and honestly today I'm not really even that fussed by the cornering performance either you can feel that it's not quite as good as it really could be and indeed it's very telling that when AC Schnitzer got their hands on one of these they didn't touch the powertrain because I think really there probably wasn't anything they could actually do these are fairly complicated things to get working at all let alone they modified instead all their work was either cosmetic or or in the handling department and most people generally agree that just sticking some bigger wider and slightly meater rubber on this transforms it I can see exactly why that would I've put it in E drive mode now because we're in town and I can so all we have for power is the single motor up the front unlike many other hybrids there is just the one and uh you know what it's not really much of an issue to be honest most times even when you are in a car that can do proper torque vectoring it's not something you really feel unless you're in um quite extreme situations for the vast majority of buyers of this car I think it really would have been ultimately pointless it does mean this is technically speaking all-wheel drive too though with the weight distribution of a mid-engine car I'm not entirely sure it' be that much fun in the snow in any case it's now a beautiful Serene thing very calming and really a lovely way to enjoy a fabulous day like this look look I love a cracking power plant as much as if not maybe slightly more than the next girl but I also appreciate these little moments this little bit of Silence I had the Ferrari 296 last week and I wind up driving that in electric mode quite a few times as well because well it's just Pleasant I then appreciate the fact you can just press a button have the engine kick back in and uh on you go it's wonderful this of course also means that unlik a electric car you're not going to suffer from range anxiety all that sort of stuff in fact it's even congestion charge exempt too so then gripes yes I do have a few are you surprised first off not massively roomy this cabin despite the fact you now have no rear seats whatsoever I do feel fairly claustrophobic in here I'm glad that the roof is down with it up it would be very cramped indeed there also is evidently an element of scuttle Shake in here I can't really feel it but my camera can I can hear it w L about a lot it only does that in cars where the wind screen is uh wobbling all over the place and I apologize if you can hear it but it's the uh that doing that it's yeah you're going back down there I appreciate the fact there are still a couple of sort of cup holders and the like in here and that is very nice the stereo is decent too and of course the infotainment is very good bit old now but it's BMW drive it was always one of the best visibility then not so great this a pillar is very very big but luckily it's close enough to you it shouldn't be too much of an issue however your passenger side is not great the a pillar over there combined with the wing mirror gives you a chunky blind spot and that sort of Hump for the back that's not so good either you cannot see a lot straight out the back is fine you've got parking sensors camera all that sort of stuff so uh you know for around town and everything it's okay I would be somewhat concerned about scuffing the front but honestly compared to a lot of other actual super cars it's not all that bad the other big issue I've had previously with these cars is the gearbox today I haven't had a problem with it and there's a good possibility that they did improve things but when I drove the car last in Coupe guys and an older model in town it was a little bit lethargic and there were moments where the whole thing just didn't feel like it really wanted to get off the line which for a hybrid with quite a bit of power out the Electric System is just not right in its defense though today I've had absolutely no problem I've been driving it chiefly in manual and sports mode and honestly it's pretty good in the Roadster you'd also get a little bit of buffeting in the cabin not masses but it's there it's not quite as well insulated from outside forces as some other cars in terms of Dynamics the biggest problem I think I'm actually noticing today is instead of a lack of grip from the front it's a lack of keenness to turn in does give you sort of vague front-wheel drive car with a bit too much power Vibes which uh I suppose does make a little bit of sense that sort of initial like inch of turn on or so the car doesn't really feel like it wants to incorporate then once it has weighted up it becomes a little bit easier to persuade overall Pace though I've got no trouble whatsoever and the brakes they're nice easy to modulate as BMW items go they're decent yeah there you can feel it it washed wide a little bit actually and then tried to break from the rear only subtly but you can feel the weight moving about quite a bit yeah put your foot down in a bend it does not like it at all and I just think it's such a shame BMW should have just committed just give us a proper hybrid super car hang the economy figures give us at least a 4-cylinder engine more power make the total 500 horses or so you could have done it oh yeah that's not elegant around that bend you've got the looks make the interior a bit more dramatic stick another 203 Grand on the price cuz let's be honest here anyone spending £135,000 as these roadsters were on a car isn't really going to care about 30 or 40 MPG they're just not they probably cared more about the tax breaks it bought and I think that's why these were quite popular for company car buyers allegedly BMW themselves were surprised by the fact they managed to shift 20,000 i8s over the near 10 years they were in production it's a shame really that sort of Co came along and knackered the last couple of years cuz I would really lik to have seen the car get a proper runout model and mi8 or something anyway probably never going to happen was it the best news though is that today these are now a proper bargain the coupe starts are you ready at 30,000 quid the roadsters cuz they're later newer cars a little bit more desirable and quite a bit rarer they're a bit more but they start at 55 grand and while for most people I'm sure a 911 is going to be far more appealing for the money if you're looking to buy a car that's got the whole exotic feel about it but you don't want exotic running costs ooh you're going to struggle to do better than this I haven't really even heard of any big deal breaking serious issues that these have over the years I mean a lot of other cars including a whole bunch of BMWs you mention it go oh E46 M3 or e92 M3 or E60 M5 people go oh wait hang on a minute oh R bearings or oh subframes or there's always something but with the I8 there's not I need to drive an I3 now I keep getting told they really really good but I've never had the pleasure so if You' got one of those and you'd like to see it on the Channel please uh do uh send me an email in any case All That Remains to be said is a big thank you to Adam for bringing this out and a big hello to his petrol head son Joshua who's starting his own YouTube channel and apparently has been doing okay thus far so uh good luck to you Joshua and from me to you get a proper job no seriously follow your dreams until you get to 18 then get a proper job only kidding it's great to see young enthusiasts out there it really really does warm my cold heart anyway to the rest of you a big thanks for tuning in and as ever don't forget hit the like button comment down below subscribe if you haven't already and I'll see you for the next one [Music] [Applause] bye-bye [Music] a

Channel: JayEmm on Cars

Views: 252,214

Keywords: Diary, VLOG, Car, Sound, Test, video, Review, Comparison, JayEmm on Cars

Id: FxbOqpUqOvo

Length: 20min 45sec (1245 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 19 2023