With its world debut at the Geneva Motor Show 2018, the BMW Concept M8 Gran Coupe embodies a new facet of luxury for the brand – ultra-sporty, extrovert and polarising.
The BMW Concept M8 Gran Coupe is more than simply a luxury sports car with four doors. It symbolizes a new and unique understanding of luxury. Like the BMW Concept 8 Series before it, the BMW Concept M8 Gran Coupe shows off BMW’s new design language, headlined by expressive surfacing that accentuates the car’s dynamism more vividly than before through its bodywork. A small number of precise character lines underline the graphic arrangement of the surfaces.
Low to the road and broad instance, the eye-catching front end of the BMW Concept M8 Gran Coupe delivers an immediate promise of an exceptional performance experience. The muscular surfaces and precise contours of the bonnet hint at the driving capability bubbling intently under the skin.
The face of the new BMW 8 Series is evident in the new Concept’s front-end graphic. The contours of the radiator grille kidneys broaden as they descend towards the road, emphasizing the car’s low center of gravity. As on early BMW coupes, the kidney elements are linked by an unbroken grille surround, creating a large single element.
The headlights are positioned slightly higher than the kidneys and give them the impression of sitting lower, which further emphasizes the car’s closeness to the asphalt. In contrast, the gold-colored kidney surround brings an added air of exclusivity to the front end. Within the headlights, the lighting technology familiar from the M8 GTE endurance racer provides a dynamic, hexagonal interpretation of BMW’s signature four-eyed front end, distilling elements of modern-day motorsport and luxurious quality into its inner details. Meanwhile, brawny air intakes in carbon-fiber-reinforced plastic (CFRP) guide the air to where it is required.
Even when viewed from a distance, the proportions of the BMW Concept M8 Gran Coupe radiate the car’s dynamic character. The Salève Vert paint finish, whose color appears to change from green to greyish blue in different lights, creates a hugely effective surface composition and teams up with the gold-colored window graphic, hallmark M gills, gold-colored brakes, wheel rims and M twin exhaust tailpipes to give the car a head-turning, all-new look.
The rear of the BMW Concept M8 Gran Coupe oozes the dynamic élan and visual impact for which M is renowned, and the wide track and flared wheel arches hint at the car’s performance capability. Horizontal lines break up the rear end stylistically, allowing the area below the rear spoiler to catch more light and adding extra visual agility. At the outer edges, the slim, sculpted rear lights with black glass covers underscore the car’s wide stance on the road. Below them, the bumper picks up the front apron’s dynamic theme. The prominent diffuser and two sets of familiar M twin exhaust tailpipes together send out a clear message of absolute performance.
The striking exterior of the BMW Concept M8 Gran Coupe combines the core values of BMW M with elegance and luxury to create a new and captivating form, and reveals a new and exciting facet of BMW M. The new model sees the BMW Group looking ahead to the BMW 8 Series Gran Coupe and BMW M8 Gran Coupe, which will be presented during the course of 2019 and round off the BMW 8 Series family.
all images courtesy of BMW Group