BMW’s latest supercar is a few years old now, but it still retails for around $150,000. The looks are love-it-or-hate-it, but I can attest to seeing one in person fairly regularly and liking it much more than in photos. However, my likliehood of owning one of these is about the same as me being drafted by a professional sports team, so I will continue to admire them from a distance. However, there just may be a loophole for the budget-challenged among us, and it exists here on eBay in the form of a full-scale showroom diorama that BMW offered dealers who didn’t want to pony up the cash for a real one.
There’s one of these in my neck of the woods, and the level of detail is impressive. Basically, if a BMW dealer didn’t care to invest in purchasing the real deal to use as eye-candy for months on end, you could request this version that would serve the same purpose of drawing customers in without the budgetary headache that buying a real one would trigger. I can’t recall seeing one for sale before, and the one at my neighborhood BMW dealer is still staring out at customers from behind the showroom glass.
Despite the model’s underpinnings revealing its immobile nature, there are multiple actual production-grade components used on this piece of fiberglass magic: the headlights, taillights, emblems, 19″ wheels and Bridgstone tires, drilled and slotted front and rear brake rotors and calipers, and windshield wipers are all the same exact parts you’d find on an i8 that can move under its own power. The temptation to turn this into a street-legal go-kart is almost too much to ignore, and the seller has opened bidding at a very reasonable $100 with no reserve.
The LED headlights and taillights also power on, so there’s little doubt in my mind this full-scale replica will find its way into a BMW collector’s garage or, more likely, garage mahal. You can fool plenty of people into thinking you have an actual i8 in the garage until they realize it hasn’t moved in years, but even then you could cite the need to keep the miles low, or perhaps a high-dollar repair keeping you from enjoying your exclusive-yet-needy super car. How would you use this unusual dealer marketing gimmick?
Can you say kit car?
We had one to show up last year at our Coffee & Chrome Show, it was WILD!! Even if I were to seriously consider bidding on this, I’m betting that it will quickly move out of my “non-discretionary” spending range, LOL!! :-)
I reviewed the real thing last year for hybridcars.com and it’s freakin’ awesome!!! In January in Montreal on snow tires . Would hang this on the wall if I had a private warehouse.
how was it brought to Cars and Coffee ? modded and driven or on a trailer ?
Again, sorry, but stretching the Barn Finds criteria,,,no?
This strikes me as something someone with a large house & wallet could mount this like wall art.
In another cosmic car coincidence, I was down at Herr Doktors office yesterday, and whats there, parked in the Doktors parking space? You guessed it. A real one. I guess ‘Managed Care’ isnt quite the burden some Doktors claim
If you go the kit car route, you just have to build it around a gas-guzzling V8.
If I could like this twice, I would. Maybe soot-spewing diesel?
Or you could go the redneck route and mount it on a 4×4 Jimmy chassis. Be sure to use mud tires.
40″ mud tires at the very least.
So have you always wanted an BMW I8, but can’t afford it? Do you have a place to display one if you got one? Do you want to make your neighbors think you have so much money, that you just let the car sit in a bay of your garage, but you never drive it, well this Ebay auction might be for you…
Was it really a matter of cost, or limited supply that prompted BMW to offer models to dealers? After all, $150,000 is roughly three typical BMWs, so a dealer could keep his floorplanning costs flat by replacing those three typical BMWs with one i8.
I for one, am hoping to befriend someone with (a real) one … this is one of the first cars with “laser” headlights… just would like to see them in operation
I won’t garage something I can’t drive, and it costs more than a lawn jockey to be just be yard art. Recycle it.
Don’t even look like a barn find to me!!
In the 60s there was a couple that showed their BMW 507 and they had a scale model of it on display too. They said the model cost more than the actual car.
Don’t think that’s true anymore.
Really want to impress your neighbors? Cut this in half and have two i8’s in your garage!
At last, a BMW that never needs repair.
This is NOT a Barn Find!!!!!
start a new web page for these types of cars!!!!!
its a showroom find, and still every bit as unique as the other cars shown here…a true car enthusiast would appreciate the find.
Your absolutely right! this is a showroom find!
Start a showroom find web page!
I good find, is a good find. Pretty sure by now, “Barn” is just a metaphor these days
Jeff, is the one at your neighborhood BMW dealer a real one or a promo? I wonder how many were built? Any way, Ended: Mar 13, 2019 , 10:40PM
Winning bid:US $6,201.00
[ 30 bids ]