The BMW i8 Is Now CHEAPER Than A New Toyota Camry...But Should You Buy One?

This insane looking mid-engine carbon fiber all-wheel drive supercar was $136,000 when it was new a few years ago and now you can pick it up for less than the price of a Toyota Camry, but should you? The BMW i8 was supposed to be a world-changing sports car or is it a supercar that was supposed to change the way you look at performance and nowadays these revolutionary cars can be had for under $50,000 even under $40,000 ones you sold on cars and bids for just $37,000 so should you buy one? The BMW i8 made its debut in 2011 in a Mission Impossible movie, the one with Tom Cruise, that's every Mission Impossible movie, but it looked so phenomenal in 2011 in that movie and production started in 2014 and it looked just as phenomenal in 2014 and lasted through 2020. They made 20,400 i8s which is pretty good for a nuts insane mid-engine carbon fiber turbocharged hybrid supercar if you ask me. The tech in that car was pretty astonishing considering development started what some 15 years ago, three different powertrains, an electric motor in the front for the front axle that makes 129 horsepower, one in the rear coupled with a 1.5 liter turbocharged 12 valve three-cylinder gasoline engine, a full carbon monocoque, all-wheel drive, and two transmissions, a two-speed in the front for the electric motor and a six-speed Ison in the back for the gasoline powertrain. That was everything, they just threw everything they had at this car and over-engineered the crud out of it. The biggest misconception of the BMW i8 is that this is a slow car and there is some validity in that because they see three cylinders right and there's nothing sporty about a three-cylinder. I mean it kind of reminds me of a Geo Metro and then they hear 357 horsepower which doesn't sound like a lot especially by modern standards and it really isn't a lot but this is the most underrated 357 horsepower I have ever seen. 420 pound-feet of torque so the torque number is pretty good but the performance of this car is way beyond what you read on paper and let me talk to you about the different modes. So starting off we're just driving around in EV mode right now you get about 15 miles on these early cars of pure electric mode now it's essentially a front wheel drive car and if I put the the pedal down it kind of moves okay but it doesn't feel very quick comfort maybe a little bit more it might be more willing to actually kick on the gasoline engine but if I put in a sport mode that keeps the gasoline engine on all the time and if I put it in sport mode and come to a stop and then push the traction control off button and put it into the sport traction control setting and then go hard on the brake hard on the gas that'll engage launch control and the launch of this car pretty freaking nuts actually this car back in the day did a 3.80 to 60 according to motor trend and a quarter mile in 12.4 seconds which is pretty freaking fast now it's not tesla model s plaid fast but I don't care who you are a quarter mile in 12.4 is really moving and in fact we ran this car up against our brand new ford mustang gt on the quarter mile strip we have that we use rough surface unprepped surface this car demolished oh great launch of the i8 actually shifts super hard launch well light is so quick off the line that's insane there's 85 miles an hour and 90 miles an hour and 100 miles an hour we're seeing something take off from this mustang like pretty crazy right I mean 13 seconds flat at a mile above sea level on a rough surface without rollout means that at sea level on a smooth surface with rollout this is easily a mid-12 second car which is really moving even though it only says 357 horsepower this car it feels quick especially once you get that little three-cylinder on boost that combined with the immediacy of electric motor means that it really really boogies the problem with the bmw i8 is this car came out roughly the same time as the holy trinity the holy trinity was of course the porsche 918 the mclaren p1 and the ferrari la ferrari and several of those cars used a innovative hybrid drivetrain just like the bmw except unlike the bmw they didn't have a little tiny three-cylinder engine they had these big honkin v8s which meant they were insanely powerful insanely fast but also insanely expensive however unfortunately they kind of you know took some of the limelight away from the bmw i8 because with its little three-cylinder and its significantly lower price point it never really saw the media attention i think it deserved this bmw i8 is 10 years old and this is a design that came out 11 years ago and it could come out 11 years from now and still look modern that's how attractive this car is you drive it around and people ask you what brand new bmw is that it is so distinctive looking it's probably in my opinion the most attractive bmw maybe ever the low front end the reasonably sized kidney grills and it gets better the further back you go so these wheels were actually really unique i8 wheels are directional on all four corners are meant to face one direction so you often see them mixed around and looking a little weird you've got this big aggressive vent in the front which looks super this unique two-tone design and then the side super low the exposed carbon on the roof and then we come to the flying buttresses and these scoops along the back which funnel air toward the rear with these led taillights i mean i can go on and on and on and on about the looks of this car but it is just phenomenal it is such a good looking car and it still looks brand new all these years later shockingly bmw applied the same design treatment to the inside now they could have taken a 3 series interior slapped it in here and called it a day and certainly there are elements that are part shared with the i8 and other cars but it is so cool looking in here the way that the vents are incorporated in the dash and those weird two vents there on the passenger side the sloping lines that face toward the driver the dual cockpit look the unique steering wheel with the paddle shifters the blue stitching the blue seat belts this is such a cool interior it still once again looks good in 2025 other than the screen which is looking a little small now and of course the fact that it has buttons which no cars have nowadays this is in a really attractive interior and it's held up incredibly well all these years later this car simulates engine sound on the inside actually that three-cylinder even on the outside doesn't sound terrible when you're on boil but the simulated sound on the inside is genuinely pretty cool i know people hate on simulated sound but we're in an era where you can buy a performance car with a fake manual transmission in the ionic 5n so why not have simulated sound if it works and it actually really sounds it sounds really convincing in the bmw i8 you know what about handling um this is not going to be a track car there's no way around it right it's it's got pretty narrow tires front and rear they are staggered front and back but still pretty narrow suspension is also pretty soft but if you read the reviews online people make this thing sound like it handles like a cabbage cart a medieval wheelbarrow it's actually very very competent considering the car only weighs 3,484 pounds that's right you get an all-wheel drive hybridized car for under 3,500 pounds this is a lightweight vehicle folks and therefore it handles like such it's actually really nimble the steering is not all that dead you get a little bit of feedback and the suspension is going to work with you and the brakes are awesome sure it's not going to set a nurburgring lap record but for where you folks are going to be driving this car at least in the u.s on relatively straight roads with bumps in them like we're doing right now this thing is perfect it is surprisingly comfortable really quiet and great for road trips and it can be fast and easy so now we have to talk about the reason you can pick up these cars for so cheap or at least the perceived reason as to why you can pick up these cars for so cheap we bought that exact car with just over 30,000 miles for 48,000 dollars and one just sold on cars and bids with about 80,000 miles for 37,000 dollars which is crazy and of course the reason you're probably thinking these cars have gotten so cheap is because they are a reliability nightmare you have a motor in the front a motor in the back an engine in the back a transmission in the front a transmission in the rear a full carbon drivetrain all sorts of electronics so let's dive in deep and talk about reliability so i had a great conversation with my buddy franny who's one of the most talented german car mechanics i know her and heidi run a great youtube channel you have to check out she owns one of these heavily depreciated i8s and we talked a lot about reliability which is why i'm opening up the rear hatch to show you nothing because you can't actually see the engine but we had a long conversation about some of the common issues surrounding i8s and here's what i learned the big one you're going to read about online is an ac problem essentially the impeller explodes sending shrapnel through the ac system and that's bad news because the hybrid battery is actually cooled off of that ac cooling loop and if that becomes blocked the high voltage battery can overheat resulting in a pretty sizable bill bummer she was saying though it's a pretty noticeable problem when it starts to fail you get a lot of noise from that ac compressor and she also believes that the issue is highly overblown that not that many i8s will have that impeller implosion but that is something worth noting on bmw i8 it's not super crazy expensive to rectify but something that can be a problem another common problem with the bmw i8 is the fuel pressure sensor so there's a little button here that i have to push to open up the fuel door so now i should be able to there we go open up the fuel door oh that's the electricity door me a very embarrassing moment for tommy micah but let me get back on track there is a fuel pressure sensor in these cars that can lock the fuel door closed if it fails now the reason for this is a little confusing if you're used to a typical gasoline car but plug-in hybrids have a pressurized fuel tank and fuel system and it has to release that pressure before it lets you open the cap so you don't get gas in your face and in order to make sure you don't get gas in your face it'll lock the fuel door closed now if the sensor fails there is a manual override you can use to release the fuel door push the button again there you hear that little click and now we can open it and now we can put gas in the car um fuel pressure sensor failures somewhat common can be kind of expensive to rectify but that is a problem you should definitely know about the next common failure point on i8 are the door struts these big old guys right here that keep the doors open when you push the button and open open the doors that's a terrible way to explain that but basically it prevents the door from falling on your head franny said that these can fail uh kind of like a wear item she said she typically replaces these about every year so that's something worth noting now another potential failure point on i8 is the low voltage battery these cars have two electrical systems the high voltage for powering the motors and the region and that kind of thing and the low voltage for the radio and the lights and all the little ancillaries the low voltage batteries can fail doesn't seem like a big deal to replace except apparently bmw asks you do it at their service center so they can tell the computer when the high voltage battery was replaced so it's not trying to charge a new battery like a three-year-old battery because the computer has a battery date code not entirely sure if i buy that but it is an agm battery that can go bad not the end of the world it's not the high voltage battery that's a whole nother can of worms but something worth noting and then lastly kind of a weird problem that is upgradable but these early cars have a 3g cell setup for connecting via the internet stuff like the app which is pretty cool and unfortunately the world has completely disconnected maybe not the world the us has discontinued 3g altogether which kind of limits some of the app functionality what you can do with this car apparently you can upgrade the system to a more modern internet connection but it is going to cost you but first you have to sit on the sill ruining your prom dress or your black slacks so we talked about some of the really good things about the bmw i8 we talked about some of the reliability myths if you want to call them that let's talk about some of the bad stuff the first being the egress and entry i think that's the correct word for it the getting in out of the i8 commonly complained about online and it is unfortunately very true these cars are extremely hard to get in and out of now i am a fairly decrepit 27 year old but even i with my sort of lean stature um has a bit of a hard time getting out of this car part of it is the butterfly doors you know do limit some of your your headroom the bigger problem though is the sill is the size of kansas and it's not just a flat sill it sticks up above the base of the seat so what you have to do is you go butt first which is usually something i don't advise for in normal life but then you swing your legs in and then you can get in and then getting out is the reverse you do legs first and then you lean your weight on the sill and kind of crawl your way out of this now mary brought up good point too what if you weren't a somewhat decrepit 27 year old what if you had a prom dress you would have you'd have an even more interesting time to preserve your modesty you would have to probably sit on the sill and fall on the ground ruining your prom dress or your black slacks in this example and then you couldn't do this so you would have to turn around please my modesty mary there we go involves a lot of spinning around no all kidding aside getting this car is a real pain uh my dad's actually in pretty good shape for a 60 year old man and um he struggles with it a little bit someone like my grandpa in a million years he would have to be buried in the car because it he would never get out this is mary trying to get in like what she claims is a normal mary can you get out of this car looking cool that was not it and that brings us to the big one the high voltage battery health now in these early cars it's about seven kilowatt hours in the later cars it's closer to 12 kilowatt hours it made them a little bit bigger and of course we've all read the headlines mclaren p1 needs a battery quarter million dollars right porsche 918 needs a battery replacement a hundred thousand dollars right these are some insane bills and the good news is bmw i8s do not fall into that camp i've done a bunch of research on the matter i've talked to franny consulted some other people and these high voltage batteries are holding up remarkably well similar setup to what you're going to find in the bmw i3 andre has close to 80 or 100 000 miles on an i3 it's just as healthy as the day we bought it all those years ago this car 10 years old has 40 000 miles originally it was supposed to do about 15 miles on charge now it'll do about 12 so it's lost maybe a little bit of range but not that bad and as long as you don't let these cars sit for super long to the point where the high voltage battery goes into the zero percent range they really seem to be holding up well and if you do need a new high voltage battery they still bill over 20 000 of these cars i found one on ebay for about 8 000 so not all that expensive if it goes wrong and quite honestly folks they're just not failing that badly other thing worth noting the 1.5 liter turbo engine in this car it's more or less a similar engine to what you're going to find in the base model mini cooper and those cars even though no one will admit it online have been phenomenally reliable i've seen them online with 150 200 000 miles and they still seem to be trucking along a lot of people in my mini group have them and they just love them they don't have any reliability issues and even more surprising than that franny said these cars are shockingly easy to maintain spark plugs are easy oil changes are easy the big downfall with these is and they've kind of fixed some of the problems with an update but you can really get these cars into high pressure high boost situations when the engine is stone cold if you're in ev mode and you go full throttle it will give you max boost because the car thinks you need all the power and then you're putting a lot of wear on that engine right and that's potentially how sam cracks had that famed head gasket failure right someone abuses these cars sure they're gonna probably give you problems but for the most part folks they're holding up super super super well they really really are i don't see a lot of horror stories about i8s online a mini group is like yes it's like an aa except it encourages you to buy more mini coopers that's right great question mary it's a very dangerous club i personally ended up spending thousands because of it lift and open the rear glass of the i8 reveals the trunk or what there is of it now this area here looks like it could be for storage i would strongly recommend against that because you're likely to bust out your your rear window doing that this is your actual trunk it's pretty small now luckily you do have the rear seats and my dad and cole actually road trip this car back from alaska over that several thousand mile trip and they had no problem with room and the other problem is because you've got that electric motor in the front and it's so slanty there's no front trunk either so that's all the storage space you get so for a grand tourer if you want to think of the i8 like that it's not a lot of space to put your grand touring items although apparently louis vuitton did do a custom luggage set for the i8 if you're very bougie so you thought getting into the front seat was hard let me show you the back seat so i'm gonna remove the little seat belt here and then that does not do what i need it to do so that folds forward but doesn't actually slide so now i gotta manually slide the seat forward a little oh boy this is gonna be interesting oh boy oh if i whine anymore it'll sound like i'm on the set of a broadway musical from the 80s this is awful i mean i know that they probably put these seats in for like insurance reasons but i don't think a kid could even be back here i think my dog could go back here my dog's the size of a horse i don't think a normal sized dog could go back here so the rear seats are for design and convincing your spouse this is a practical car only so look everybody discounts the i8 because they see a supercar and they see three-cylinder engine on the so look everybody discounts the i8 as being not a supercar because they see three-cylinder turbo engine from a mini cooper right and they see this amazing style and it just doesn't add up in their brain and then they read it the hybrid and that brings back thousands of prius and of nerds and look as a nerd driving this car i'm here to tell you this thing is awesome it is plenty quick it is plenty comfortable it's very hard to get in and out of but if you can get past that an excellent daily driver that can be really fun on a canyon road and still deliver you 35 40 mpg if you're running on gasoline all the time upwards of 90 or 100 if you're only using gasoline occasionally this is an excellent excellent machine so much to the point where my dad brought it bought his dream car which was a new porsche 911 targa 4 we spent over eight months waiting for it to be built we specced it out it was $150,000 car and then we got this shortly after and he found himself driving this $48,000 used bmw more than the brand new porsche because it makes you feel more special this is more of an experience it feels more fun than a new porsche and you just can't really buy more car for about $40,000 as we tried to do so that porsche got sold and the bmw i8 stayed in the stables so the big question should you buy a heavily depreciated bmw i8 for less than the price of a new toyota camry yes believe it or not yes i think is the answer this car makes you feel more special and cooler than just about any car i've ever driven and certainly there's no car for less than 40 grand that'll make you feel better than a bmw i8 it's impractical and it's low to the ground and it's hard to get in and out of but it is phenomenally cool highly underrated all-wheel drive so you can use it as a daily driver great gas mileage i mean it's just a great machine and it's proven itself to be fairly reliable over the years now are they going to depreciate below 37 35 000 maybe but i kind of think with this shape and this form factor you're hard pressed to find one in a few years for cheaper so i'd get them now while they're still fairly affordable before they start rising up in value because i could easily see these cars being collector's items in 15 20 25 years let me know what you guys think in the comment section below huge thank you to mary behind the camera we'll see you in the next one okay you ready what does that go oh i just sat in that in the goose feces new band name i call it cool beautiful ready getting sold oh it's pretty good the elegant that look good hit it tommy hit it tommy look at this guy he was a woman actually that was a woman if you that was a bird