- Romanian motorsport team Engage Racing has built a one-of-a-kind BMW i4 for hillclimbs.
- It retains the original i4 M50 powertrain and battery pack but it's about 440 pounds lighter than stock.
- They plan to take it to the Pikes Peak hillclimb next year.
Electric vehicles make great hillclimb machines, particularly the ones that aren’t too heavy. Just look at the charts and records at the Goodwood Festival of Speed or Pikes Peak; over the last few years, they have been dominated by electric cars. Some of these quick EVs are purpose-built, while others, like this BMW i4 that I saw a few days ago in Romania, are stripped-out and modified versions of road cars with massive aero bits bolted on. And this one's ready to go on the offensive at Pikes Peak next year.
This i4, affectionately named “Elsa,” was built by Engage Racing in Romania with the help of BMW Group Romania and other local and international sponsors. The result is a stunning electric racer that will be just as quick around a track as in a hillclimb. Its makers' goal is to take it to Pikes Peak, where, just like at Goodwood, EVs have been the quickest entrants.
Gallery: BMW i4 Hillclimb car by Engage Racing
The first thing you notice about this car is its custom aero kit, which has a dinner table-sized splitter under the front bumper, suitably wide side skirts and a massive diffuser to complement the huge rear wing. The suspension has new springs and shocks that lower and stiffen the car considerably, allowing it to corner flat and keep its stick-out aero bits from scraping due to body roll.
The i4 they started with is a dual-motor M50 with 536 horsepower and 586 pound-feet of torque. In stock guise, it weighs about 4,890 pounds and hits 60 mph from a standstill in 3.7 seconds. Even with that weight, though, it feels quicker than claimed, and when Car and Driver tested the acceleration, it found the time to 60 mph to be around 3.3 seconds.
The guys from Engage Racing have so far removed about 440 pounds from the i4, which means it’s around the two-ton mark, and it could be able to reach 60 mph in under three seconds. They haven’t measured the official performance yet because the car isn’t completely ready. It should also go around corners better than the standard i4, which we felt was a bit cumbersome around a twisty mountain road.
Most of the weight savings came from removing a large part of the interior and all of the sound insulation. They kept the curved screensThe car will become even lighter when they replace the front and rear glass with a lightweight race-spec polycarbonate.
Engage Racing intends to take the modded i4 to run in the last stages of the Romanian hillclimb and time attack championships this year, mostly to get to know the car and test it before it hopefully goes on to do greater things. The plan is to enter it in the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb in 2025 when it could also go for a lap of the Nurburgring Nordschleife.
