2025 BMW M8 Competition Gran Coupe Is A Time Capsule Of Life Five Years Ago

Hey, do you guys remember the BMW M8? Yeah, I thought so. Well, here’s a fun fact: it’s still very much on sale. You can walk over to your local BMW dealership, tell the salesperson you’d really like to spend $172,000 on a vehicle that was introduced during the first Trump Administration, and drive home. It sounds pretty wild, I know. But here’s the thing — the 2025 M8 Competition Gran Coupe is actually pretty damn good.

If you look at what BMW has done with the new hybrid M5 in pure disgust or you’re just really looking for one final hit of expensive, fast, luxurious, internal combustion power, then it’s really hard to look past what the M8 offers. Sure, it’s got the infotainment system of a car that would now be entering kindergarten and the fuel economy of a truck, but you cannot deny that it is fast, it is pretty and it is deeply comfortable.

Full Disclosure: BMW lent me an M8 Competition Gran Coupe with a full tank of gas to do with as I pleased for a week.

The M8 Competition Gran Coupe is a big car. Its 200.9-inch body weighs in at 4,480 pounds, but I’ll tell ya what, it drives much smaller than it looks. It’s no M2, that’s for sure, but the M8 Comp has a great habit of shrinking around you even on the twistiest of roads. Because this car comes from a time before BMW completely nerfed its steering, you actually get some decent feedback from the road. It isn’t a Lotus by any means, but the steering wheel is still decently communicative.

When you’re going around a corner, the M8 Comp hunkers down — you really don’t feel much body roll despite the fact it has the same curb weight as a Ford Explorer. You’ve just got to hope that the corner you’re navigating is smooth because unfortunately, the M8 suffers from Stiff Car Syndrome (contact your doctor if your car remains stiff for more than four hours). Over rough pavement, it’s incredibly bumpy, even if you dial the suspension setting all the way down to Comfort. Anything above that is pretty much bone-shaking. To be fair, this isn’t exactly unprecedented. These big German super sedans have been pretty hard-riding for years now. Just stick to the Autobahn, and you’ll be fine.

The thing is, though, this car feels athletic — far more athletic than its luxury cruiser limo roots would suggest. It wills you from corner to corner, gliding you through in such a way that you really don’t give a crap that your spine is sticking out of your head. There’s a bit of magic to cars that make you hope a twisty road never ends. The M8 never feels too big for the situation, even though it might actually be.

The real centerpiece of the M8 Comp’s entire package is the S63 twin-turbocharged 4.4-liter V8 under the hood. You’re not going to find any fancy hybrid stuff here, just a big, meaty V8 motor. BMW says it puts out 617 horsepower and 553 pound-feet of torque. I’m here to tell you those numbers are a goddamn lie. I wouldn’t be surprised if this thing was pushing 700 horsepower at the crank. Regardless, it’ll rocket to 60 mph in a Car and Driver tested 2.5 seconds, spinning all four wheels as it does, and if you keep your foot in it, the M8 will go on to a top speed of 190 mph if you select the M Driver’s Package (otherwise it’s limited to 155). All of its monstrous power is rooted through a tried-and-true ZF 8-speed transmission with three different ferocity levels.

Really, what blows my mind even more is how quickly it accelerates past 60. That V8 is a freight train of a motor and a real testament to what internal combustion power can do when left to its own devices. Oh, and thanks to the 15.6-inch carbon-ceramic front brakes, the M8 Competition Gran Coupe can stop just as well as it goes. You can really make some passengers sick while rearranging their organs. Who doesn’t love that?

BMW wants you to tailor your M8 (and all M cars, to be fair) to your exact preferences. That’s why there are about three million options for shift speeds, power levels, brake aggressiveness, traction control and even drive wheels. Like other high-end M cars, you can throw the M8 Comp in rear-wheel-drive-only mode if you’ve got no fear of death or high repair bills.

Inside the M8 you just can’t get away from the feeling that you’re driving something that is a few generations behind the times, especially if you’ve driven newer BMW models. Its gauge cluster and infotainment screens are lifted from cars that first went on sale nearly 10 years ago at this point, and you can tell. It doesn’t mean they don’t function well and can’t be customized to suit your needs, it’s just something to note if having the latest and greatest tech is important to you. Don’t worry, it still has wireless phone connectivity, but I did have some pairing issues with an iPhone 16 Pro Max.

Even more good news for the technologically agnostic is that the cabin has plenty of hard buttons and a totally separate tiny screen for the climate controls. You can futz with those settings in the infotainment screen using your last-generation iDrive knob, or you can ignore that altogether.

Aside from the technology, the interior is still a very lovely place to be. My $171,575 test car (prices start at $142,175 including destination) was full of very pretty Midrand Beige leather, well-bolstered sport seats with tons of adjustments, and a Bowers & Wilkins stereo system that I never really felt got loud enough. Tons of leather, carbon fiber and real metal throughout help justify that colossal price tag. Both front seats were very comfy, though at this level of car I do wish there was a massage function. If you look up you won’t find a sunroof, which might confuse some people, but BMW wasn’t about to cut a hole in its full carbon-fiber roof.

My rear-seat passengers never felt quite at home. Because of the car’s sloping roofline and limited interior space despite its size, there isn’t a ton of room back there. Still, I was able to fit four adults vaguely comfortably for short-ish trips. There’s technically a fifth seat in the middle, but you’ll have to put your legs on either side of the full-length center console spread-eagle style. Where the M8 Gran Coupe lacks in rear passenger room, it more than makes up for with trunk space. It’s a seriously deep hole that can swallow 14.8 cubic feet of your very expensive luggage.

I’ve talked a lot about how old the M8 is, but wow, it’s still one of the best-looking vehicles you can buy today. My tester was finished off with a $5,500 Maritime Blue paint, a BMW Individual color that was actually pretty divisive. Some said they dug it, but others felt it was a bit too loud for a car as understated as this one. I dug it.

The first thing you notice when you walk up to the M8 is just how damn long it is. This is further accentuated by the slim side windows and generous overhangs. To me, it looks as fabulous and contemporary as ever. Up front, its nearly normal-sized kidney grilles are a welcome reprieve from the lung-sized grilles a lot of modern BMWs have. Out back, the big quad-exhaust setup lets everyone behind you know this car means business. With a more dramatic lower body kit and very pretty 20-inch wheels, the M8 Gran Coupe still delivers in the looks department.

It’s tough to say what’s going to happen to the M8 and the 8 Series as a whole. It’s never been a particularly great seller for BMW, but it has been kept around without a significant update far longer than anyone probably expected.

This is a strange car, you know. It certainly has thoroughly modern power numbers, but it achieves them in a deeply old-school way. Cars like the M8 Competition Gran Coupe, which turn to dino juice to get people from place to place extremely quickly, are becoming few and far between. Hell, even BMW seems to know this with the new, plug-in-hybrid M5. It’s cheaper and more powerful than the M8, but I don’t know if it has the same soul.

The BMW M8 Competition Gran Coupe is by no means a perfect car, but it’s communicative and sometimes imprecise in ways that cars really aren’t anymore. I can’t tell you if it’s going to be a future classic or if it’s a better buy than a new M5, but I can tell you that its driving experience makes you feel connected in ways that not many other cars can — and ways that they probably will not in the future.