2021 BMW 8 Series

[MUSIC PLAYING] ALISTAIR WEAVER: Meet the eighth wonder of the 911 world. Codename 992, this, the latest generation of the Porsche 911 Carrera S, has just landed in the US so we thought we'd pitch it straight into battle with its most obvious rival. MARK TAKAHASHI: That Porsche 911 is a special grand touring car, no doubt. But it has a new challenger with an old name. This is the BMW 8 Series, and it has a lot of the same style and refinement. And at least on paper, for performance, it's its most direct competitor. ALISTAIR WEAVER: We'll drive them on the road, on the track, and yes, we'll even drag race them. Then we'll argue about which one is best. But before all of that, please subscribe to the Edmunds YouTube channel, and head to Edmunds.com for a great deal and all your car shopping needs. Over the past 20 or 30 years, Porsche has really worked hard to broaden the appeal of the 911. If you want a hardcore, track-focused version, you can still choose the GT3 or the GT2, but the entry-level Carrera and this, the Carrera S, are really everyday sports cars. This latest interior is much improved. The quality's superb, and all the latest infotainment gadgets are focused on this large touchscreen. The driving position's great. The seats are supported but cossetting. And while the ride quality's not quite as good as a luxury sedan or SUV, this would be a brilliant, long-distance car, something to go coast-to-coast. It's what, in the olden days, people would call a GT, a grand tourer. MARK TAKAHASHI: For a starting price of $115,000, that Carrera S better be special. This 850-- it starts just about $2,000 less, but it has a huge advantage when it comes to standard features. You get way more with this car. Not just all wheel drive, all wheel steering, and adaptive dampers, but a lot of convenience and advanced safety features that, quite frankly, should be standard on that 911. Overall, the big difference between these two cars is this is more comfortable and practical than the 911. ALISTAIR WEAVER: No one does evolution quite like Porsche. This, the eighth generation of the 911, is instantly familiar. There's the classic silhouette and those voluptuous hips, but look a little closer and you see some exquisite new detailing. These headlights, for example, are haute couture. And have a look at this. Now, this is a little bit geeky, but I love the fact that the badge is now recessed into the hood. Yeah, just imagine how expensive that is to manufacture. Take a walk down the flanks, press the key, and the door handles now pop out to meet you. Arguably, the biggest change, though, is here at the back. Like every new Porsche, the latest generation of 911 has a red strip on every variant, and the exhausts now protrude from the rear bumper. Hiding under here is the now-familiar 3-liter twin turbo flat 6 that was found in the old 911, except that it's been redeveloped to offer an extra 23 horsepower. So that's 443 horsepower in total. Now, I know this is entirely subjective, and the 992 is beautifully executed, but overall, I'm not sure I didn't prefer the look of the old 991. MARK TAKAHASHI: Alistair makes some great points on the 911, but that silhouette, for me? It's actually getting a little too familiar. It's not turning heads the way 911s used to, and certainly isn't turning heads the way the 850 is. The 850 follows my favorite formula for touring coupe, and that's a long hood up front with a big stonking V8 underneath. It's a lot of great surface treatments throughout the entire car. I love the double-bubble roof and all of these sharp creases and coved-out surfaces. They lighten that visual weight. This graceful roofline tapers down to the stubby, but not tiny, trunk. It has 14.8 cubic feet of cargo space. That's almost triple what the 911 has. And the-- ALISTAIR WEAVER: Blah, blah, blah, blah. If you want luggage capacity, frankly, buy an SUV. And to my eyes, it still looks like a $120,000 German Camaro. MARK TAKAHASHI: Oh, ouch. ALISTAIR WEAVER: Anyway, should we hit the track? MARK TAKAHASHI: Sure. Let's see what your Sport Beetle can do. [MUSIC PLAYING] ALISTAIR WEAVER: So before we get out to the circuit and find out how well these cars go around corners, we thought we'd have an old fashioned drag race. It's a classic battle-- front engine V8, all-wheel drive versus rear engine, flat 6, rear-wheel drive. Mark has an extra 80 horsepower, but of course, he has a power-to-weight disadvantage. And so does his car. MARK TAKAHASHI: I live my life 1,320 feet at a time. I am Groot. [ENGINES REVVING] ALISTAIR WEAVER: [YELLING] MARK TAKAHASHI: Oh, no. No. ALISTAIR WEAVER: Ha. Easy. MARK TAKAHASHI: Boo. ALISTAIR WEAVER: One mil. One mil to the empire. This really came as no surprise, as when we tested these cars of the Edmunds Test Track, the 911 had a half-second advantage in the quarter-mile. But straight line speed doesn't necessarily mean it's a better sports car. MARK TAKAHASHI: Let us go. Impress me. ALISTAIR WEAVER: Impress you. It is amazing jumping onto the circuit. We've talked a lot at the top of the show and off-camera about how the 911 is turning into a GT, and you need a GT3 if you want to be a real hardcore enthusiast. Then you get out on a circuit like this and stick it into Sport Plus mode, and it just comes alive. It's just wonderful. It's so agile, so precise. MARK TAKAHASHI: It's so much more fun to drive, and it seems more at home being tossed around like this. ALISTAIR WEAVER: It's strange, because on the road, I was really disappointed by the sound of this engine, certainly compared to the naturally-aspirated 911s of old. But now on the track, it does kind of sound good, doesn't it? MARK TAKAHASHI: Yeah. It sounds a lot better when you can really wind it up, like we are right now. But in the city, I was as disappointed as I was with the 718 Boxster and Cayman. It just didn't sound good. It didn't encourage you to drive it hard. But you're right, it's singing just fine right here. ALISTAIR WEAVER: It's interesting. The last time I was on the streets of Willow Circuit, I was actually in a 911 GT3. And I'm not going to pretend that this is as exciting as that car, which really is track-focused. But it's still mighty good. You don't need a 911 GT3 to have a fun track day car. And of course, this is so much more usable on the road. It's amazing how, once you put it into Sport Plus setting, once you start to lean on it, how it manages to change character, and how much that kind of essence of what a Porsche is all about is maintained. And I don't want to kind of wax lyrical and make this sound like a puff piece, but it's pretty good. I think above all else, what makes this car for me is just the steering. I remember when Porsche first introduced electric power steering, and all the traditionalists, me included, were horrified that the last minutia of steering feel had gone. But I think they did an amazing job in the time between then and now of improving this system. And this is still the best steering on any road car on sale today. I love it. MARK TAKAHASHI: This latest redesign for the 992 did a lot, interior-wise. It cleaned it up, but I'm almost thinking they cleaned it up too much because we used to complain there are too many buttons, and now I'm saying, there aren't enough buttons. ALISTAIR WEAVER: I agree. It's all our fault. The one thing about the touchscreen-- everything now is focused on this screen. But you have to be pretty precise. And if you're on a slightly bumpy road, I found myself kind of a bit all over the place. MARK TAKAHASHI: And the buttons are a little on the small side, and you have to give it a pretty decent poke to get it to actually respond. ALISTAIR WEAVER: So there's a few odd things in here. This sort of piano-black plastic in the middle-- I've been prodding it for the last few days expecting it to be a button, and there's nothing behind it. And all you get is these kind of greasy finger marks. MARK TAKAHASHI: I also feel like it's wasted potential. They could have put a little storage there, a couple slots, a pocket or something for your personal effects, which is a little lacking in this car. And there's some usability, some functionality problems I have with it, as well. ALISTAIR WEAVER: If you have it in the navigation setting, a lot of the map is actually obscured by the steering wheel and the clock, and the temperature gauge is obscured by the other side of the steering wheel. So it's far from perfect. But one detail I love, though, is this central rev counter, which has been a hallmark of every 911. And they've gone for a real retro feel. MARK TAKAHASHI: Yeah. It certainly has that aesthetic of a nice fine expensive wristwatch. ALISTAIR WEAVER: This car, above all else, feels like a luxury good, which given that, in this specification, it costs nearly $140,000, then it kind of needs to. MARK TAKAHASHI: But that's it. That's it right there-- that noise, and the feeling of being kind of shuffled around a little bit, taking each turn. That's what every 911 should feel like. ALISTAIR WEAVER: I am surprised at how different it feels. When you get out of the BMW, which let's face it, might not be the M8, but it's still an M850. So I expected a greater sharpness to it. And yet, the difference is absolutely colossal. They don't feel like rivals anymore out here. They feel like cars built for entirely different purposes. And that's a bit of a surprise how different they feel. I expected this not to feel as good on the circuit, and I expected the BMW to feel better. MARK TAKAHASHI: Really? I'm intrigued, because I mean, it's fairly well-known you're a Porsche-phile. ALISTAIR WEAVER: [LAUGHS] MARK TAKAHASHI: This 911 is instantly easy to drive. You know what to expect. There isn't a lot of getting to know you, as I had to do with the 8 series. ALISTAIR WEAVER: I think that's fair. I think no rear-engined 443-horsepower sports cars has any right to be this easy to drive. And of course, as we have been, you can turn all the gadgets off and start to slide it around, and then you can make it oversteer. And you have to provoke it pretty hard these days, but you can still make it dance if you want to. [MUSIC PLAYING] So Mark, we just jumped out of the 911. I think both of us were hugely impressed by that on the track. This feels, even from the passenger seat, very different. MARK TAKAHASHI: I think it feels different from every seat, actually. It's an 1,100-pound difference between the two cars, and even though this has an 80-horsepower advantage, it's all given back. You really feel that weight transfer back and forth in a way that you don't in the 911. The 911 is so much tidier and happier on track than this. ALISTAIR WEAVER: I was amazed at just how different this felt, at how much bigger and heavier it feels. The 911 almost shrinks around you on the circuit. This feels like it grows. And I think a lot of that is not just the mass, but also the steering. This gives you so little feedback, compared to the Porsche, on what's going on. And I think that's been a criticism of a lot of recent BMWs. MARK TAKAHASHI: It's funny that we don't have any steering feel in this because it is really important. Especially in this car with all that weight in the nose, I want to feel when we're starting to wash out those front tire patches. But it is still very competent. As soon as they start washing away, we get a little more traction from the all-wheel drive system. But the 911 is simply a better track car. ALISTAIR WEAVER: And I think for a car with an M badge-- I know it's not the M8. We're driving that shortly-- I kind of still expect a little bit more. And it's frustrating, in a way, because you feel that there's actually a really good chassis and a good setup. And it's just the tactile bits-- the throttle response, the steering feel, even the brake feel, as well-- it just doesn't feel as harmonious as the Porsche. MARK TAKAHASHI: It's a little softer. It's a little sloppier. ALISTAIR WEAVER: A lot sloppier. MARK TAKAHASHI: I wouldn't say a lot. Come on. ALISTAIR WEAVER: It just feels like a big, blunt instrument in the way that the Porsche is this kind of finely-crafted scalpel. And at the beginning of this film, and off-camera, as well, we've been talking about how the 911's become this GT, this grand tourer. It's got bigger. It's got heavier. But when you come to the circuit and really push them, then there's still a world of difference between the 911 and pretty much anything else in this market. MARK TAKAHASHI: Yeah. They've certainly had a few decades to fine-tune it. ALISTAIR WEAVER: You sort of muscled this around the circuit in a way that the 911 is all about finesse and fingertip control. MARK TAKAHASHI: And that might be one of the reasons why I also like it. I like Mustangs. I like big, beefy V8s that you kind of have to work to get. ALISTAIR WEAVER: It is. I just wish it gave me a little bit more feedback. So I don't mind muscling it, but I kind of want to know what the car's doing. MARK TAKAHASHI: Yeah, and I'm holding out hope for that M8, that maybe that will be the sharper, rougher one. I think they gave themselves that room to improve. ALISTAIR WEAVER: One thing I will say is, when I originally saw this car, I wasn't super impressed by the interior. But now, driving it out in the real world, I kind of like it. MARK TAKAHASHI: It's certainly more practical than the Porsche, in a number of ways. They've got their infotainment system dialed in really well. It's the right reach for me. It's the right size screen. I like it is in my sight lines. But everything else-- placed kind of right where I want them, mostly in interior storage. I actually have a little pad for my phone, as well as a center armrest bin and bigger pockets, which I think is actually important for a grand touring car. ALISTAIR WEAVER: The other thing that I like, actually, is although this screen in the center here is touch sensitive, you've also got this rotary control knob down here. Maybe we're just getting old, but I actually like the idea of having a kind of rotary node that's easier to control and a little bit more precise than prodding. And it helps my OCD, as well. MARK TAKAHASHI: Well, one thing about that dial is it allows you to operate the system without being nearly as distracted because when you're using a touchscreen, you actually have to look at the screen and navigate towards where you want it, versus this, which has little detentes, so you just kind of move it from hot spot to hot spot. ALISTAIR WEAVER: It also has a proper gear stick. MARK TAKAHASHI: Yes. ALISTAIR WEAVER: None of that sort of little-- MARK TAKAHASHI: It looks like a little electric shaver. There's one area where I can see the 911 has an advantage, and that's visibility. It's a nearly unimpeded view outward, mostly because that front roof pillar is thinner. I'm having to bob back and forth with the sharp left turns on this track that I don't have to do in the 911. And that's also true when you want to look off to the sides and in the back. ALISTAIR WEAVER: I know this car has a lot bigger trunk than the 911. We can absolutely agree on that. But those rear seats are still pretty much useless. MARK TAKAHASHI: But maybe they're a little more accommodating than a 911? There's only one way to find out. Alastair, I believe the sensation I'm feeling right now is regret. Yeah, it's not meant for-- oh, dear. It's not meant for adults back here. It's meant for children. ALISTAIR WEAVER: This is quite a nice little sequence of corners, actually. You take it in on the brakes, just use the inertia of the car. MARK TAKAHASHI: I make poor life decisions. What's our safe word? Sea cucumber. Sea cucumber. ALISTAIR WEAVER: Sea cucumber? MARK TAKAHASHI: That's my safe word. You know too much about me now. ALISTAIR WEAVER: Have you had enough, Mark? MARK TAKAHASHI: Yeah, I'm done. [MUSIC PLAYING] When we started out this morning, we thought it was going to be a really close battle. But as the day wore on, the gap has widened. ALISTAIR WEAVER: It has, and to be honest, we've been surprised just how different these two cars really are. Despite the M for motorsport in the M850i, this is really a luxury sporting sedan in a pretty coupe body. MARK TAKAHASHI: Which is one of the reasons we both agree that after a long day at the track, it's our choice to get us home because it's just a little bit more comfortable. ALISTAIR WEAVER: But if you want something that's really going to engage you, going to excite you, going to put a smile on your face, if you want a real sports car, then the only choice is the 911. Porsche's done a great job with this eighth generation. It's even easier to live with on a daily basis. The new interior, for example, is much improved. But underneath, it's still a 911. And out here on the circuit, it just felt fabulous. Our top-rated sports coupe just got a little bit better. MARK TAKAHASHI: Let us know what you think in the comments below. Hit subscribe. And for more information on the Porsche, the BMW, and all of its competition, head on over to Edmunds.com. ALISTAIR WEAVER: That's Edmunds-- MARK TAKAHASHI: Dot-- ALISTAIR WEAVER: Com. [MUSIC PLAYING]