MUNICH: Right now, BMW's 8 Series comprises the 8 Coupe and 8 Convertible, though the segment goes back to the early 1990s. On Friday, however, BMW tweeted a dark photograph of the next member of the 8 Series family shrouded in shadows: the 8 Series Gran Coupe.
Gran Coupes are, in short, just standard coupes with an extra set of doors and an interior space often too small to designate the vehicle as a sedan. Nevertheless, the 6 Series Gran Coupe is essentially the standard model redesigned into a sedan, thanks to the additional space provided by the back doors, and the 4 Series Gran Coupe is a hatchback-styled four-door version of the original.
Based on the published teaser, the 8 Series Gran Coupe looks like it's going to be a sedan, though not knowing the amount of interior space, we can't be sure.
At last year's Geneva Motor Show, the company debuted an M8 Gran Coupe concept which was an M-treated four-door version of the 8 Series coupe, so this upcoming model comes as no surprise. It's likely that the Gran Coupe will be powered by the same V8 engine as its predecessors in the segment.
The car will premiere at the BMW Group's NextGen event in Munich in June, ahead of its September launch. As the starting price of the latest 8 Series coupe is about US$112,000, we can expect the four-door iteration to be priced above that.
