What's the news?
This is our first look at the expected third model variant in the BMW 8 Series family, this being the more practical four-door Gran Coupe. This development follows in the footsteps (tyre treads?) of the old 6 Series, which had a Gran Coupe to go alongside the more familiar Coupe and Convertible cars.
Exterior
While the styling is very much as per the 8 Series Coupe, and you can obviously see that the Gran Coupe has an extra pair of doors than its genesis material, it's perhaps worth outlining just how much the Gran Coupe has grown in size. Not only is it fully 231mm longer than an 8 Series Coupe, with 201mm of that courtesy of a stretch of the Gran Coupe's wheelbase, but it's also 61mm taller and 30mm wider. That makes it a physically big car: it's almost 5.1 metres from tip to tail and it'll weigh at least 1,875kg in its lightest 840i guise. Nevertheless, it's a fabulous-looking thing (at least, it is in our opinion), with good proportionality and even a fairly successful integration of BMW's now-trademark massive kidney grilles (which is actually a one-piece moulding, here, rather than two separate grilles).
Interior
Up front, the same excellent dashboard layout and iDrive-controlled interface as found in the rest of the 8 Series models can be seen in the Gran Coupe, so it's to the back we must go. A rear-facing central transmission tunnel extrusion means the Gran Coupe is surely a strict four-seater, despite the fact BMW has stuck three belt buckles back there and is calling it a five-seat car, but all of that 201mm of additional space seems to have gone on rear legroom. It's cavernous back there, BMW claiming this is the car with the most passenger room that has ever worn the brand's 'Coupe' epithet and there's greater headroom everywhere too, thanks to the Gran Coupe's extra height. An optional panoramic roof offers to flood the cabin with light and, behind the passenger compartment, there's an automatic tailgate on all models that allows access to a 440-litre boot. A set of 40:20:40 split-folding rear seats adds to the Gran Coupe's practicality measures.
Mechanicals
Porting over the engine choices from the 8 Series Coupe and Convertible models, there's a 3.0-litre, turbocharged straight-six petrol unit in the 840i (340hp/500Nm), which can be had with or without xDrive all-wheel drive, while both the 3.0-litre biturbo straight-six diesel in the 840d (320hp/680Nm) and the 4.4-litre twin-turbo petrol V8 in the M850i (530hp/750Nm) high-performance derivative come with xDrive as standard. All models run an eight-speed Steptronic automatic gearbox. Every Gran Coupe will hit a maximum-speed limiter at 250km/h, with the 0-100km/h times running 5.2 seconds (840i), 5.1 seconds (840d xDrive), 4.9 seconds (840i xDrive) and then 3.9 seconds (M850i xDrive). Fuel consumption runs from 6.2 litres/100km (45.6mpg) on the 840d up to 9.9 litres/100km (28.5mpg) on the M850i; CO2 emissions are between 162- and 229g/km, while on the 840i, fitting xDrive does make the car thirstier and slightly worse for tailpipe emissions.
Anything else?
The BMW 8 Series Gran Coupe range is available to order now with first deliveries in September this year. The 840i Gran Coupe is €104,060, the 840d xDrive is €111,880 and the M850i xDrive is €163,300.