NBW's i8 swallows the M6's V8

28.05.2020 18:42

If you want to create a vehicle that has fuel efficiency as its primary concern, you’ll need to start with an aerodynamic design made of lightweight materials.

If, on the other hand, you’d like to create a vehicle that has speed and performance as its sole objectives, you’re going to want to start with an aerodynamic design made of lightweight materials.

We’re frankly surprised no one figured this out before now.

The team at Gabura Racing Technologies, a motorsports engineering company with expertise in race transmissions and custom builds, has taken BMW’s plug-in hybrid i8 sportscar and turned it into a supercar. The Munich-based company (handy, yes?) has removed all vestiges of futuristic hybrid technology from the i8, and rather than plug in a power cord has plugged in a supertuned BMW S63 twin-turbo V8 — mounted in the front, no less. That engine, the M-version of the occasionally maligned and once-recalled N63 4.4-litre, already boasts 560 horses, and the boosted Gabura version (apparently pre-tweaked by BMW tuner Alpina) is said to add at least 200 more.

Gabura put this work-in-progress on display at the 2015 Professional MotorSport World Expo in Cologne, where the company made great pains to point out that this isn’t just a tune-up. They have, they say, completely emptied that aluminum and carbon i8 shell, and placed an entirely new car inside it.

The V8i is an exercise in marketing, perhaps, but it will yield a street-legal racecar of exceptional speed. We don’t know yet what kind of performance to expect (the stock i8 can hit 60mph in just 4.4 seconds), but we know that the i8’s curb weight is half a ton less than the M6 that the S63 engine normally powers. Oh, and Gabura specializes in racing transmissions, so expect a six-speed sequential manual mounted ahead of the rear axle. Back-of-the-envelope calculations say the V8i should be really, really fast.

At this point, we’d like to go on record as saying that we disapprove. The i8 is sexy enough as it is, and it’s the green kind of sexy. We’re not happy to see BMW’s high-performance hybrid technology unceremoniously removed with an angle grinder.

Off the record, we’ll take two.

(BBC)