BMW M8 (E31)

Information

M8 E31 concept car from 1989, a supercar-matching coupé whose existence was denied for so long and there isn't an exact cause of why it never went into production.

The 8-Series it is based on was launched at IAA Frankfurt in 1989 and it was a great grand tourer but a bad BMW - the reviews blasted it as a boring, docile car!

Well, the M8 would have been the solution. A 640 HP, 300+ km/h, 1450 kg two-seater beast with a V12 derived from the S70 series Only 3 units were made of the engine powering this grand tourer, all in 1990, and are essentially dual overhead versions of the S70B56 with 4 valves per cylinder.

Besides that, the E31 M8 had wider axles, a carbon roof, mamy Kevlar panels, headlights incorporated in the bumper to minimise air turbulance cause by the gaps in the hood if the headlights would be in the same place as in the stock 8-Series, bucket seats, Sabelt belts and a lot of Alcantara. The fuel tank is a racing-homologated one too.

The car has undergone a restoration in 2020-2021 to get it back running as the car didn't start at all and the fuel tank was disintegrating from the inside!

As mentioned at the beginning, we never got a cause of it not hitting production but exorbitant costs might have been the reason.