BMW recently started delivering Skytop, but test cars are still being spotted back home in Munich. Normally prototypes wear camouflage to hide the final design, although that’s not the case here. For obvious reasons, the luxury automaker didn’t bother to dress up the car. After all, it’s an exact replica of the concept of the same name, plus the usual parking sensors and so on.
It is as beautiful as when we first saw it at the Concorso d’Eleganza Villa d’Este in mid-2024. The extent of the body changes makes it virtually impossible to tell that the Skytop is based on the M8. Well, at least from the outside. Except for the reddish-brown leather, BMW has clearly taken the interior from the old 8 Series.
However, we must make an important distinction. It is always wrong to judge quality based on prototypes. Test cars do not give a complete indication of what customers actually get. We’ve seen many cars in development with cheap hard plastics and other inferior materials, but in each case the later production version had a far nicer interior.
Given that the Skytop commands a huge premium over the M8 donor car, the final two-seater cabin will certainly be premium. Of course, one could argue that BMW should have put more effort into giving the car a truly bespoke interior to differentiate it even further from the regular 8 Series.
When you walk outside, you immediately notice the Skytop. It creates a stark contrast when parked next to regular cars like BMW’s 2 Series Active Tourer or an Audi A6 sedan. It’s not just the body with its removable targa panels that immediately makes the car an eye-catcher. The elegantly slim lights at the front and rear are a feast for the eyes, as are the tailor-made wheels with their beautiful slats.
BMW is still busy assembling the 50 cars before moving on to the Skytop’s more practical sibling. The Speedtop is still a two-seater, but is shaped like a shooting brake with plenty of cargo space. It too is already sold out and won’t go into production until the end of next year.
What’s next? BMW doesn’t want to say, but there will be an ultra-exclusive M car at some point. The team responsible for small series models has reserved a building site for a high-performance vehicle, so the future looks exciting. It’s just unclear how close (or how far) that future might be.
