BMW can’t decide if the 8-Series Competition is a GT or track toy. Unfortunately, it’s neither.

BY KYLE KINARD


Oregon Raceway Park is a thicket of asphalt, a tangled maze of blind crests strung between diving cambers. The track drapes across the hills of northeast Oregon, just two hours from Portland but a world apart.

We arrived before daybreak to stretch the legs of BMW’s latest super coupe, the 2020 M8 Competition. BMW reanimated its long-dormant 8-Series moniker for the 2019 model year, replacing its lithe 6-Series line in the process. In swapping out the 6, BMW amped up the visual flair of its flagship coupe.

The M8 Competition looks spectacular here, its Java Green curves painted against ORP’s panoramic Turn 2. From this cresting corner, visibility stretches for miles. Oregon’s Mt. Hood sits proudly to the west, with Washington’s glacial peaks, Mt. Adams, Saint Helens, and Rainier rising against the northern horizon.

But the M8 drew my gaze. The coupe is a broad, muscular thing. Its front end could be any modern BMW, a 4- or 6- or 8-series. But from the nose back it’s all muscle-car fastback; the hard lines of a Mustang brought to a sexier, silkier end.

After early morning photography, I wheeled onto ORP’s front straight and worked the M8 Comp up to speed. The coupe’s long hood harbors a rocket; the 4.4-liter, twin-turbo V-8 pumps out 617 horsepower and 553 lb-ft. from just 1800 rpm. The punchy eight mates to an 8-speed automatic routing power through all four wheels, or at the touch of a button, just the rears.

ORP’s long front straight crests just as you hammer the brakes, hauling the M8 down from triple digits into Turn 1. You can’t see the corner’s apex at turn-in, and the dipping elevation lightens any car’s rear end just as you need stability the most. The M8 kept everything tidy, wiggling its broad hips a smidge, betraying the effort those wide rear tires made to plant the chassis. Turn 2 is another torturous braking zone: uphill on entry, with a dive into the cambered apex that leads toward Turn 3. Every other curve at ORP follows this challenging suit, and there are 16 of them across the track’s 2.34 miles of rolling asphalt.

Within a couple laps, the M8’s front Pirellis went gooey-hot under the strain, tasked with reigning in the M8’s considerable 4295-lb. curb weight. After another lap or two, the 275-section, 20-inch fronts gave up on the M8’s heft, pushing under the strain and the coupe’s slight front weight bias (52.9-percent). Lapping at ORP became an exercise in preservation, saving the front end from further abuse by over-slowing at corner entry, nudging the front tires toward corner apex.

Roadandtrack