Less than 100 units of the new BMW i8 Protonic Red are available for the U.S. market and one of them has already landed at your local dealership. This special i8 arrived this week at Century West BMW and it’s already drawing a crowd at the Southern California-based BMW shop.
“Everyone is tired of the white, blue and grey-painted BMWs,” says Chris Marino, General Sales Manager.
The Protonic Edition flashes BMW’s latest red-variant which, to the naked-eye, appears not too far removed from the venerable Imola Red paint most-often found on M-variants. What the Protonic Edition may lack as far as drivetrain changes from the base-i8, it makes up with eye-candy.
Simply pull up the doors and the Protonic Red Edition logo sits very non-discreetly on the door-threshold. Getting into the Protonic i8 – ingress-practice notwithstanding – gives away further design elements that are immediately noticeable in the carbon fiber interior trim and dark NESO interior seating with red-woven stitching.
Behind the headreasts you would find the embossed i8-logo. Grey seatbelts with contrasting stitching and special interior mats make up the cabin-refinements of the Protonic Edition.
The Style 470 20” wheels in Orbit-Grey Metallic shroud the outstanding brakes setup that haul the i8 from its 4.2 second 0-60 time, in a mere 108 feet!
The BMW i8 Protonic Edition is an exercise in taking a sustainable engineering design-evolution to an even-more-unique level of distinction.
“It absolutely gets attention,” Marino says. “An i8 is always sure to catch a glance, but the Protonic Red Edition is set to create a sig-alert in Los Angeles’ apocalyptic nightmare of a traffic-grid,” added Marino.
“I’ll happen to glance over when driving the car, and not in the many BMW’s that I’ve driven, do I see as-many people wanting to take this i8’s picture.”
Of course purists could bemoan the addition of an electrical-hybrid powerplant to a BMW, but the i8 has proven to be highly successful and a flagship car for BMW.
“The purists will have to adapt. The i8 and its propulsion systems represent the direction BMW is taking its engineering and while the 2002-crowd may not follow-along, the rest of us will fall in love,” Marino told us.
