BMW 8 Series Review 2024

Do you spend much of your time driving huge distances on motorways, but you want to do it with the kind of style and glamour that a luxury saloon just can’t deliver? Well provided you don’t need the space and practicality of a saloon, then the diesel-powered BMW 8 Series could well be the answer.

Like most big luxurious coupes, the BMW 8 Series is comfortable and quiet on the motorway, allowing you to demolish huge distances quickly and easily. However, while the rest of the class only offers petrol power, the 8 Series’ diesel offering will mean cheaper fuel bills, and much longer stints between fill-ups, which will be a big help for your rate of progress.

As well as the coupe, there's the flashier BMW 8 Series Convertible and the more practical four-door BMW 8 Series Gran Coupe.

If you're buying used, the diesel is definitely the pick. You see, the big V8-powered BMW 850i is all very nice, with huge performance from its crackerjack of an engine. However, there are quite a few luxury four-seat coupes out there with big petrol engines, making the BMW 8 Series just another choice. 

The diesel, meanwhile, is something completely different, and has no direct rivals. Lexus offers the Lexus LC with a petrol-electric self-charging hybrid, but that’s about as close as rivals get. So, if you plan to use your BMW 8 Series to cross continents and regularly blast along motorways, the superior economy and extended cruising range of a diesel will be very appealing.

For those buying new, the 840i M Sport is truly all you need in the real world thanks to its performance, refinement, and decent running costs for a car of this calibre.

There are a few large luxurious coupes out there, but they vary greatly in terms of their ethos and price. 

Predictably, the closest rival for the BMW 8 Series comes from Mercedes-Benz, in the form of the S-Class Coupe. Lexus will be looking to tempt the same buyers with the stunning Lexus LC, and if you look (quite a long way) further up the price scale, luxury grand tourers such as the Aston Martin DB11 and the Bentley Continental GT come into view. 

Alternatively, if you view the BMW 8 Series as a sports car rather than a grand tourer, you’ll also want to consider the good old Porsche 911.

The big BMW’s interior design may lack a little bit of wow-factor, but the same can’t be said of the materials used in the cabin. Every surface you see looks dense and lustrous, and most of them are as much a treat for the fingertips as they are for the eyes. 

Everything is thoughtfully finished, too, with splashes of brushed chrome trim here and stitched leather there. And, with flush-fitting panels and extremely sturdy assembly, everything feels like it’s built to last. 

Okay, so it can’t match the hand-made feel of a Bentley Continental, but it’s a match for the Mercedes S-Class Coupe on quality, and a sight better than an Aston Martin DB11. 

Unsurprisingly, the BMW 8 Series gets BMW’s latest infotainment system, and the good news is that it’s one of the best in the business. Importantly, it’s got most of the important functionality covered. There’s navigation, DAB radio, Bluetooth, a wifi hotspot, wireless phone charging and a whole bunch of clever connected services. Apple Carplay is also supported, but Android Auto isn’t. It will be in time, but only on a handful of Android devices.  At the start of 2022, the infotainment screen was enlarged from 10.25-inches to 12.3-inches, which matches the size of the main instrument display.

By far the best thing about the system, though, is that it’s so easy to use. Like every other system in every other high-end car, it has touchscreen functionality, but what marks out the BMW’s system is that it can also be operated using shortcut buttons and a scrolling wheel on the centre console.

It looks very stylish and means it’s much simpler and less distracting when you’re driving. Despite the complexity of the system, it’s really intuitive to use, with logically arranged menus and easy-to-find features. The graphics are fast and sharp, so it’s nice to look at and slick to operate. This really is as good as it gets.

The BMW 8 Series has four seats. However, it’s best to look upon that statement as a technicality, rather than a reality. The ones up front are as roomy and as comfortable as you’d expect, with plenty of handy storage spaces dotted around. 

Despite the large footprint at 4851mm long, 2137mm wide (including mirrors) and 1407mm tall, most of the length is dedicated to housing the engine. The two in the back are very cramped, considerably more so than in the Mercedes S-Class Coupe, and even a modestly-sized adult will find their knees pressing into the seat in front and their barnet pressing into the headlining. 

Smaller children in booster seats should be okay, but you might struggle to get bulky child seats back there. That’s not only because of the tight space, but also because of the small opening that results from tipping the front seat forward to gain access to the rear, something that also makes getting in and out of the back seats a less-than-graceful business. 

The boot is a decent size in terms of capacity at 420-litres, but unsurprisingly in a car like this, the space is rather narrow and shallow. The opening is also rather small, and there’s a big lip to lift items over. You’ll get a couple of sets of golf clubs in, but nothing too much bulkier than that. A powered tailgate is provided across the range, though.

The 'entry-level' BMW 8 Series, the 840i, uses a 3.0-litre straight-six petrol engine developing 333PS. In truth, this is all you need for almost every situation thanks to its slick eight-speed automatic gearbox and 0-62mph in 5.2 seconds. It also sounds rather wonderful when pressed harder.

The 840d, which is no longer available new, has a 320PS diesel engine of the same size and configuration. It's a fraction quicker than its petrol counterpart in the benchmark 0-62mph sprint (4.9 seconds), probably by virtue of the extra off-the-line traction delivered by the diesel’s standard four-wheel drive. However, the diesel’s real talent lies in the ease with which it builds speed. It delivers huge low-down pull, so you can execute overtakes without breaking a sweat, and its power delivery is as smooth as it is effortless.

The BMW M850i, meanwhile, has the same 4.4-litre petrol V8 found in the BMW M5 saloon, but detuned to give ‘just’ 530PS. Predictably, this is even faster, doing the benchmark spring in just 3.9 seconds. Again, there’s a mammoth slice of low-down torque, which means you can deal with nine out of ten driving situations without having to tap into the upper half of the rev range, just like you can in the diesel. 

And, in most of these situations, you probably won’t detect much of a performance difference between the two. The difference comes when you really plant your right foot: while the diesel’s willingness to rev is more limited, the petrol just keeps on pulling.

At the pinnacle of the range sits the M8 Competition with a vast 625PS on hand to deliver 0-62mph in a mere 3.2 seconds. It's hugely quick and enjoyable to drive, though opportunities to unleash that power might be frustratingly few and far between unless you head on longer trips.

All versions drive through an eight-speed automatic gearbox, which is an absolute cracker. It swaps cogs smoothly and gently when you’re taking things easy, and quickly and intuitively when you’re getting a wriggle-on.

The big difference you’ll notice between the petrol and now discontinued diesel engines is in the noise they make, both the amount of it, and the nature of it. Both are great. 

The diesel gives off a pleasant burble under hard acceleration, and that melts away to barely a whisper once you reach cruising speeds and ease off, making it a fabulous long-distance companion. The fact that wind- and road noise are also well contained contributes even further towards the BMW 8 Series’ impressive cruising abilities, even if a Mercedes-Benz S-Class Coupe is even more hushed overall.

The BMW 850i is just as quiet and smooth as the diesel at 70mph, but the way it gets there is rather more dramatic, especially when you select the sportiest driving mode. Your epic acceleration is accompanied by an even more epic soundtrack, characterised by a bassy metallic bellow and pops and cracks from the exhausts. The M8 simply ups the intensity of this aural fun.

With the 840i, you get a smooth six-cylinder burr that is both pleasing and sporting, while it also has its own distinct take on the 8 Series theme.

The BMW 8 Series hasn’t been smashed up by the good folks at Euro NCAP yet, and because it’s likely to sell in such low numbers, it probably never will be. 

It comes with most of the safety gear you expect - airbags and traction aids and all that - plus a couple of things you might not. All versions get a head-up display that beams key information directly onto the windscreen in front of your eyes so that you seldom have to look away from the road, while the headlamps have a handy automatic high-beam function. 

Automatic emergency braking is also provided, but it’s perhaps a little disappointing (although not entirely surprising) that some of the cleverer driver-assistance systems - such as active cruise control with lane-keeping assistance and stop-and-go functionality - are left on the options list. No version gets a spare wheel. The 850i comes with a pot of tyre sealant, while the 840i and 840d come on run-flat tyres.

The BMW 8 Series features a lot of advanced technology and systems which are great when they work, but can be complex and expensive to repair when they go wrong. 

BMW came 12th out of 29 manufacturers in the latest HonestJohn.co.uk Satisfaction Index with an overall satisfaction rating of 89.63%. 

It’s big, it’s posh, it’s powerful and it’s expensive. As such, you wouldn’t expect a car like the BMW 8 Series to be cheap to insure. Your expectations are spot-on. The 840i sits in group 45 for insurance, making bills a fraction more palatable, but all of the other models in the line-up sit in group 50, the most expensive group there is. There won’t be any way around it, so you’ll just need to accept that premiums will be high.

On a car as extravagant and as expensive as the BMW 8 Series, it’ll come as no shock whatsoever that tax bills will be, well, as high as it’s possible to get. On all versions, you’ll pay the flat rate of £190 per year, and between years two and six of your car’s life, you’ll also pay a £490 surcharge on top. 

As a used car buyer, just be grateful that you’ve swerved the steep first-year tax payment - between £1650 and £2745 depending on the version - that forms part of the car’s list price. On all versions, company car drivers will pay Benefit-in-kind on 37% of the car’s value, which is the maximum possible. That’ll make it ruinously expensive.

The BMW 8 Series doesn’t have trim levels as such. The various versions are differentiated mainly by the engine they have. There are one or two other minor differences between them, such as a few styling tweaks of what sort of braking system they get, but in terms of luxury kit, the specification is pretty much the same across the board, and each version is very much a luxurious high-end offering. 

That means your standard kit includes two-zone climate control, leather upholstery, heated front seats, ambient interior lighting, keyless go, a powered tailgate, all-round parking sensors and a reversing camera. 

As always with luxurious cars like this, there are various options that can be added - many bundled up into packs. This gave buyers all-sorts, including soft-close doors, ventilated front seats, 360-degree camera, TV functionality, and a Bowers and Wilkins Surround Sound audio system.