Two doors. Twin exhaust tips shining. A turbo releasing air as you shift. These give life emotion, something beyond just needing to survive.
This is what a car should be, what a car should do. It must give you more than driving from home to work and back. It needs to make you feel.
I feel it when I get in my car. Many readers feel it when they get in their cars. If you do not feel it, you may not be able to. Or you are in the wrong car.
“What’s the right car then?” That question is impossible to answer.
It can be based on a sound, a body line, a feeling when you drive. The best way to describe it, is it must make you look at your car for no reason other than admiration, awe, or happiness.
Will this intro ever end and the wannabe writer get to the damn point? Yes!
My point is that if all this is going on in the core of my being, how is it possible that a four-door electric sedan is gnawing at my focus?
BMW i4 M50
The BMW i4 M50 has four doors. Four doors are used when designers surrender to accountants.
You need four doors so that the whole family can get in and out of the car easily, and then we can sell more units, say the accountants.
But two doors provide balance and flow, and a harmony of design meets function, say the designers.
Grandma cannot climb through the driver’s side with the seat folded forward, say the executives. And so the car has four doors – which should automatically disqualify it in my books.
Yet, the profile of the i4 M50 is sleek and aggressive. It looks big, but not bulky, while retaining its air of luxury-cross-sportiness which BMW sedans are known for.
And in this deep blue, its lines are regal.
Inside, it’s all BMW luxury and gadgets and bucket seats. More tech than you need when driving, and more than enough to tell family members how much better your car is than theirs.
It’s electric
The reason it’s called the i4 and not the 4 Series is because it is electric. Oh no. First four doors and now this.
It’s going to be quiet and heavy, and not made for darting around tight corners. No braking, downshifting, throwing it in… feather the throttle, feather the throttle, and then bam – foot flat and roaring cylinders as you power out.
It will be sensible, stable, and comfortable. Although there are hints of fun in the handling, thanks to an M Sport suspension system and M Sport brakes package.
But that’s not what will draw you to get inside. The allure is its twin electric motor setup that provides 400kW and 795Nm.
This is ludicrous. In fact, it borders on madness to give a road car so much power. I love it.
You will be driving to work – no doubt to a high-paying job to afford the BMW i4 M50’s South African price tag of R1,600,000 – and there will be a stop street.
You will activate launch control and go from 0-100km/h in 3.9 seconds. Sweet potatoes, that’s supercar-fast.
Or maybe you will be cruising at a completely legal speed on the freeway, have a petrol-powered performance sedan move alongside you, and violently pull away to leave them as a dot in your rearview mirror. All while maintaining the aforementioned completely legal speed.
All numbers
This is all on paper, of course, and until you see it in the metal and get in and drive it, you will not know how you feel about this electric sedan.
Maybe the BMW i4 M50 feels clinical, more like a Kindle version of cookbook than a Charles Bukowski paperback.
What I do know is that in photos, the i4 M50 looks good.
On paper, it is a special kind of powerful – and at R1.6 million it will easily be the most kW-packed car you can buy for the price.
Come on BMW, get this thing on South African roads so we can make up our minds.
Keyword: Forgive me – I think I might like a four-door electric sedan