BMW Confirms 8 Series Concept And 1500bhp F1 Car For Goodwood Festival Of Speed

BMW has confirmed that the Concept 8 Series will get its public debut at this year’s Goodwood Festival of Speed, starting on 29 June.

The exponentially-expanding show at the famous south of England racetrack is fast becoming the UK’s unofficial annual motor show. BMW isn’t cutting any corners when it comes to this year’s exhibits, placing the reborn 8 Series at the forefront of the action.

The pre-production 8 Series will be there to gauge public opinion ahead of its planned production start date next year. It’s going to be joined by the new M4 CS; the lightened, faster M4 that has already posted a 7m38s lap of the Nurburgring.

The CS will be driven at speed up the venue’s hill-climb course by BMW touring car drivers Colin Turkington, Rob Collard and Andrew Jordan, plus Tiff Needell for some reason.

But there’s going to be much, much more noise than either of those cars can make. Also being slung up the hill will be the first ever Formula 1 car to win the world title with a turbocharged engine. The 1983 Brabham BT52, designed by legendary BMW engineer Paul Rosche and piloted at the event by former F1 driver Ricardo Patrese, used a blown 1.5-litre four-pot BMW heart to produce a totally bonkers 1500bhp. It should be awesome to watch in action.

There are a bunch of other cool trinkets that BMW is bringing to the Festival of Speed, like an M6 GTLM racer designed by an American master of conceptual art, a special version of the i8 hybrid and the latest M760Li xDrive, with its twin-turbocharged 602bhp V12.