A New M1 Was '95 Percent Finished' Before BMW Canceled It

The hybrid sports car was '95 percent ready,' but BMW pulled the plug at the last minute.

By: Jeff Perez

Dec 12, 2024 at 4:30pm ET

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You probably don't remember the BMW Vision M Next concept from 2019. The svelte sports car was supposed the replace the i8 and usher in a new era of electrified performance for the BMW M brand. Instead, the concept was relegated to the history books, never to see the light of day.

But that almost wasn't the case.

In a recent interview published by automotive YouTuber Joe Achilles, BMW author and historian Steve Saxty explains how the BMW Vision M Next concept—internally referred to as the i16—nearly made it to production. Saxty says the car was “95 percent finished” and that the concept's design was close to what the final production model would have looked like.

"All of the surfaces are mature, as opposed to cartoon-like," said Saxty. "And [BMW had] done much more than that beneath the surface; they’ve done body engineering as well."

BMW had planned to put a four-cylinder plug-in-hybrid powertrain in the i16 with upwards of 600 horsepower. That would give the car a 0-62 mile-per-hour time of 3.0 seconds and a top speed of 186. It would even be able to drive up to 62 miles on a single charge (on the European cycle).

BMW continued work on the hybrid sports car throughout the COVID-19 pandemic and planned to release it sometime in 2022. But before it reached the production line, the company shifted gears (pun intended) and greenlit another vehicle instead: The XM.

"They just had to make a decision of, 'Do we go with that or XM?'," Saxty revealed.

The XM was marketed as the BMW M1’s successor when it debuted for the 2022 model year. But the plug-in-hybrid performance SUV hasn’t exactly been well-received. Sales of the XM are down 30 percent this year, and the company is already considering axing sometime in the next few years.