BMW Speedtop crashes Villa d’Este party with “brand’s strongest V8”

The Bavarian automaker has attended the Concorso d’Eleganza Villa d’Este event with a sporty shooting brake concept called the Speedtop. Although still not in production form, it is coming to the market in a batch limited to 70 units, and customers are already invited to make preorders despite unannounced pricing.

The Speedtop represents an evolutionary step forward from BMW’s Skytop Concept introduced at a Villa d’Este event a few years ago. That one was a Targa car based on an 8-Series chassis and eventually went in production capped at 50 examples. The company boasted selling out the entire batch well ahead of the production start date.

The new prototype is a Shooting Brake, but it has the Skytop’s signature shark-nose front, slim headlights and backlit radiator grille. The same goes for the hood, which has a crease in the middle that continues onto the roof. There is an added spoiler on the roof and exclusive 14-spoke wheels with a bi-color finish, but the side skirts and the lower body look nearly unchanged from the previous concept.

The cabin seats two people in posh leather seats. A luggage area behind the seats houses bespoke travel bags by Italian brand Schedoni. In addition to this luggage area, the car also has a separate trunk divided in two sections trimmed with expensive leather.

According to BMW, the engine is the company’s “most powerful” to date. This likely refers to the 4.4-liter V8 turbocharged in the M8 Competition to 625 PS (616 hp / 460 kW) and 750 Nm (553 lb-ft) of torque. The company hasn’t provided any acceleration numbers; it’s also unknown when the first vehicles may reach their owners.