It is called, or rather should have been called, i16 and in the electric range BMW should have taken up the legacy of the innovative i8 plug-in sports car that the Munich company produced between 2014 and 2020.
To tell the story of this 'jewel' of technology and above all of style, is Domagoj Dukec who has been leading the design of BMW since 2019 and who had previously been responsible for the style of the BMW i.e. BMW M sectors.
Dukec recently published a series on his Instagram account of sketches and renderings relating to the aforementioned i16 sports car, conceived, developed and never confirmed.
"The I16 had all the style of a future but still classic model - wrote Dukec on Instagram - with innovative touches that advanced the design compared to the M1" which was evidently referred to.
"In less than 12 months the car was ready, inside and out. The secret had been to use the composite structure of the BMW i8. The i16 explains BMW's design - it was never made, but there was a moment when we thought it would happen. That was when we introduced the Vision M Next concept in 2019."
“And we wondered whether that car could become a replacement for the exotic i8 hybrid sports car. It was imagined that the new car would carry the i8 M badge to highlight improvements such as increased power, greater electric range but also more aggressive styling and a more capable chassis."
Unfortunately, it was not possible to see this project materialize because the Covid-19 pandemic took hold in 2020, and BMW shelved the idea of transforming what was shown with the Vision M Next concept and the internal study into a production car. - never shown before.
Of the i16.
From the sketches published by Dukec we certainly cannot interpret the new specifications of the i16.
However, it is known that the Vision M Next used a centrally mounted 4-cylinder turbo engine coupled with a plug-in hybrid system for over 590 hp of power.
And BMW itself, at that time, had estimated a 0-100 km/h time of 3.0 seconds and a top speed of 300 km/h.
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