To put it bluntly, BMW drivers tend to love driving. And the formula was very simple for decades: an ingenious engine at the front that gives off its power at the rear, everything kept in check with all-round brilliant handling. However, these days there are tons of BMWs out there for people who don’t care about driving, and the formula for those who still do has expanded quite a bit. A front-wheel drive hot hatch, for example. Or a fully electric four-door that drives … just like a BMW four-door. Or maybe a mid-engined carbon supercar with a 1.5-liter hybrid.
With 50 grand you get quite a bit of used BMW, to say the least. For that money there are regular cars with circulars and M-divisions of all shapes and sizes, all of which follow the basic rules of BMW as we knew them. Among these numbers, 1M deserves special mention, a parts container special that became a BMW greatest hits album. If you are particularly unforgiving towards cocky and under-gifted drivers.
To slow things down a touch, then a touch more, then a whole lot, there is the Z1. But when you’ve got one of the most unique BMWs of all time, powered by an in-line six that’s so slick you could use it as a negligee (wait for it to cool down), getting out of the speed will never be difficult .
For our money, however hypothetical it may be, the i8 has to be the best. This is BMW that boots up with a handful of bold pills and dares another attack on the mid-engined supercar after the brilliant but underrated M1 and the Nazca C2 dead on arrival, a victim of cold feet and long memories.
So we’re talking about a car that is only the second mid-engined BMW ever, but also made of carbon fiber and aluminum, with a drag coefficient of just 0.26 and an output of 370 hp – and 40 miles per gallon in the process. And butterfly doors, people. Butterfly doors.
