BMW Z8 2001

The Z8 was BMW's production answer to the Z07 concept of 1997, a deliberate homage to the 507 of the late 1950s. Build ran from 2000 to 2003 and just over 5,700 cars were made. The body panels and the space frame beneath them are aluminium, the engine is the 4.9-litre S62 V8 lifted from the E39 M5, and the only gearbox offered was a six-speed manual; there was no automatic option until Alpina built its own version with a larger, softer engine.

Because the S62 is an M engine, the Z8 is considerably quicker than its retro shape suggests: about 400 hp, weight distribution close to even and a chassis signed off by BMW's M division. The details are what date it in the right way. The instruments sit in the middle of the dashboard rather than in front of the driver, the hardtop is a separate item to be stored rather than folded, and the neon rear lights and long bonnet exist because Henrik Fisker's brief was to look backwards while the engineering looked forwards. BMW also committed to keeping parts available for decades after production ended, which is part of why surviving cars stay usable.

Why the Z8 Is a 1,200 km Time Capsule

The car photographed here has covered 1,200 km and is listed below as mint, garaged, at 300,000 USD. Mileage that low raises mechanical questions rather than cosmetic ones: rubber, fluids and fuel system components age on the calendar and not the odometer, so an unused Z8 needs careful commissioning rather than none at all. What the mileage buys is originality, because the wear points that normally give a twenty-five-year-old roadster away have simply never been reached.

The Z8's other life is on screen. One appears in The World Is Not Enough, fitted with missiles behind the front grille and then cut in half by a helicopter-borne saw; the film cars are covered in our BMW Z8 Bond feature, and the wider Bond fleet, starting with the DB5 in Goldfinger, is indexed in Movie Cars. In the Batman Garage collection it sits beside the M4 Coupe, the turbocharged half of the same story.