BMW i8 supercar

BMW has sold out of its i8 supercar just two weeks after deliveries started, with new buyers now being told they’ll have to wait up to 10 months to get their hands on the £95,000 hybrid machine, the company has said.

The most successful dealer so far has been BMW’s i showroom on Park Lane in London’s Mayfair with 170 orders. The sales manager there, Peter Adams, told The Telegraph he was staggered at the car’s success. We’ve had numerous people asking to buy the display car. 

The German firm will be breathing a huge sigh of relief at the i8's popularity after taking a big gamble that buyers would want to stump up the price of a new Aston Martin for a car that combines an electric motor with a three-cylinder petrol engine.

The 1.5-litre turbocharged unit is taken from the new Mini and tuned to produce 231bhp, which added with the front-mounted electric motor gives the i8 a total of 357bhp. According to BMW, the car will hit 62mph from standing in just 4.4 seconds thanks in part to to the lightness of the carbon-fibre reinforced central tub.

The battery-only range of 23 miles is enough to cut official CO2 figures to just 49g/km and qualify the i8 for exemption from London’s congestion charge. Surprisingly, this has been a big factor in some Londoner’s buying decision, according to Adams. It’s amazing the number of customers who said ‘we really don’t want to pay it’, he said.

Adams has been taking deposits on the car since 2012, before it was clear BMW would actually build it. Buyers clearly aren’t stretching themselves. Some are adding to collections, or coming out of more exotic brands than BMW. “It’s the biggest conquest car I’ve known as a BMW salesman,” he said. According to Adams around 25 percent of customers have chosen the £12,200 Pure Impulse Design Package, which bundles various trim and technology options.

Analysts IHS Automotive reckons that by next year BMW i8 will outsell its rivals by more than 2:1 in Europe, predicting just over 1700 will find homes across the region next year. However the competition is catching up first. Next year Audi will launch a new R8 supercar and McLaren will unveil its entry-level supercar, which it has said will cost around £120,000. IHS predicts that by 2016 R8 sales will have overtaken the i8, with McLaren not far behind.