BMW recently kicked off Skytop deliveries, but test cars are still being spotted at home in Munich. Usually, prototypes wear camouflage to conceal the final design, although that’s not the case here. For obvious reasons, the luxury automaker didn’t bother to disguise the car. After all, it’s a spitting image of the namesake concept, plus the usual parking sensors and whatnot.
It’s as beautiful as the first time we laid eyes on it at the Concorso d’Eleganza Villa d’Este in mid-2024. The extent of the body changes makes it virtually impossible to tell the Skytop is based on the M8. Well, at least from the outside. BMW clearly borrowed the cabin from the outgoing 8er, save for the reddish-brown leather.
However, we need to make an important distinction. It’s always wrong to judge quality based on prototypes. Test cars are not fully indicative of what customers actually get. We’ve seen plenty of work-in-progress cars with cheap, hard plastics and other subpar materials, but in every case, the subsequent production-ready version had a far nicer interior.
Given how the Skytop demands a huge premium over the M8 donor car, the final two-seater cabin is certainly going to be top-notch. Sure, you could argue that BMW should have put more effort into giving the car a truly bespoke interior to further separate it from the regular 8 Series.
Stepping outside, the Skytop immediately stands out. It creates a powerful contrast when parked next to regular cars like BMW’s own 2 Series Active Tourer or an Audi A6 sedan. It’s not just the body with its removable targa panels that makes the car an instant attention-grabber. The elegantly slim lights front and rear are a sight for sore eyes, as are the bespoke wheels with their wonderful lamellas.
BMW is keeping busy assembling the 50 cars before moving on to the Skytop’s more practical sibling. The Speedtop is still a two-seater but takes the form of a shooting brake with ample cargo room. It too is already sold out and won’t enter production until the end of next year.
What comes next? BMW won’t say, but at some point, there will be an ultra-exclusive M car. The team responsible for small-series models has a build slot reserved for a performance vehicle, so the future looks exciting. It’s just unclear how near (or how far) that future might be.
