Some cars just refuse to die, even if their manufacturers axed them years ago. That’s exactly the case with the BMW i3 and i8, which, despite being discontinued for at least two years, continue to show up on the company’s sales reports.
So far this year, BMW sold a combined 24 units of the defunct battery-powered city hatchback and two-door hybrid sports car, according to BMW Blog quoting the automaker’s second-quarter financial report. These are brand-new cars, mind you.
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Zombie sales
It's not uncommon for quirky, unconventional cars to make an appearance on official sales reports even several years after their demise. That's exactly the case with the BMW i3 and i8, which continue to rack up new-car sales despite being discontinued for at least two years.
BMW bundles the two models together in its reports, so we don’t know exactly how many units of each model found new homes, but we know how many ended up in the United States. In the first-quarter report, BMW said it sold a single i3 in the U.S. and that’s still true today because the Q2 report from the company’s North American arm doesn’t show any i3 or i8s sold here. When it comes to the i8, all of the undisclosed units made their way somewhere else in the world.
Global deliveries of the two battery-powered models dropped 95.8% compared to the first half of last year when BMW somehow sold a whopping 575 units. This year, however, might finally be the last one when the i3 and i8 show up on the German automaker’s sales reports because just six units were purchased in the second quarter, while 18 were sold in the first quarter.
The only reasonable explanation we have for this rather odd situation is that some dealers still had a few New Old Stock cars on the showroom floor and finally got rid of them, possibly with some healthy discounts to go along.
With a starting price of about $45,000 when new, the BMW i3 was the company’s first mass-produced all-electric car, selling over 250,000 units worldwide during its nine-year stint. Meanwhile, the bespoke i8 was more of a collector’s item with less than 21,000 units ever made.
Powered by a hybrid setup consisting of a 1.5-liter gas engine and an electric motor, the i8 made a combined 369 horsepower, which wasn’t quite enough to go along with its supercar looks and $136,000 starting price. As a result, fewer than 7,000–including coupe and roadster–ever made it stateside.
