{"id":1965645,"date":"2026-06-01T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-05-31T21:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1965645"},"modified":"2026-06-01T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2026-05-31T21:00:00","slug":"bmw-i8-long-term-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1965645","title":{"rendered":"BMW i8 – long-term review"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

A couple of years ago Top Gear mag turned 30. Aged better than any of its journos, let me tell you. Anyway, as part of our celebrations we asked our presenters and writers, both past and present, to nominate the greatest car of the last 30 years.<\/p>\n

Well it\u2019ll no doubt stagger you to learn that above the third placed Lotus Elise and the Bugatti Veyron in second, the BMW i8 emerged victorious. Let\u2019s muse for a second on why that might be. First and foremost it\u2019s two things that send us jurors wild: a) it\u2019s ground-breaking and b) it\u2019s that rarest of things, a ground-breaking sports car.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

No-one takes risks with sports cars, but here was BMW investing billions into a car it had little evidence that anyone would buy. It was a complete step into the unknown. Other firms that had given hybrid a passing nod (most notably the Holy Trinity) had used it to boost performance. What no-one had risked was downsizing the engine. But here was BMW putting a three cylinder 1.5 from a Mini into its flagship \u00a3100k sports car. Embedding it into a carbon fibre chassis with butterfly doors, no less.<\/p>\n

BMW\u2019s i project was fantastically bold, exactly the kind of radical, innovative engineering you hope the world will embrace, but seldom does. And so it proved, on sale from 2014 until 2020, only 20,645 were built. Porsche was selling 50 per cent more 911s than that every year.<\/em><\/p>\n

Fortunately for me, this scarcity hasn\u2019t manifested itself in high residual values. A 2017 Porsche 911 with 50,000 miles will set you back around \u00a355,000. An i8? Not much more than half that, it turns out. I\u2019ll leave you to do the Googling there – hopefully you\u2019ll come away as tempted as I was.\u00a0Because surely, at some stage, these have got to become desirable?*<\/p>\n

So yeah, I\u2019ve bought an i8. I cross shopped it with the sensible (Golf GTI) and the tempting (Audi R8), but I needed a car I could use every day. Had to be grey, or better still, silver, had to have the blue exterior accents and I wanted a light interior.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

What to watch for when buying an i8? Is it still on its original 12v battery, because if it fails it can have a knock on into the hybrid system. And check the AC compressor, because it\u2019s also crucial for battery cooling – you don’t want the lithium ion getting too hot. So naturally I bought the first car that was the right colour and spec. It\u2019s got a clean bill of health according to the service log, and that\u2019s good eonuhg ofr em. Sorry. Hard to type with fingers crossed.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

So what\u2019s it going to be like running a decade-old hybrid full of cutting edge technology? I\u2019m hoping it\u2019s going to have aged as well as Top Gear mag, rather than it\u2019s new custodian.<\/p>\n

*Do not take investment advice from this man<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A couple of years ago Top Gear mag turned 30. Aged better than any of its journos, let me tell you. Anyway, as part of our celebrations we asked our presenters and writers, both past and present, to nominate the greatest car of the last 30 years. Well it\u2019ll no doubt stagger you to learn […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[226,237],"class_list":["post-1965645","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-crawlmanager","tag-topgear-com"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1965645","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1965645"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1965645\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1965645"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1965645"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1965645"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}