Before BMW launched the second-generation 8 Series in 2018, the company teamed up with Pininfarina for a special concept car. The pair created the BMW Pininfarina Gran Lusso Coupe, a stunning one-off designed to preview the brand’s next flagship offering. Although BMW never intended to turn the Gran Lusso Coupe into a production model, it shared many similarities with the production G81 8 Series that would debut five years later.
BMW gave Pininfarina “total freedom” for the project, said the brand’s design director, Fabio Filippini, in 2013. “They really trust our skill, our capacity of interpreting their design identity and the design values.” The German automaker occasionally interjected to ensure the concept was “not going against the BMW identity,” but it was a Pininfarina-led project otherwise.
Photo by: BMW
The Gran Lusso debuted with BMW’s trademark kidney grille, finished in matte-sheen aluminum, with a shark nose slant and the design lines extending out from the grille and badge. Simple lines formed the coupe’s face, with a wide lower grille opening hiding the subtle Pininfarina branding, with sleek LED headlights on top. The car’s high beltline sat below a sleek, rearward-positioned greenhouse accented with a unique Hofmeister kink and a bold V-12 badge on the C-pillar.
The coupe rode on 21-inch wheels with a two-tone finish, turning the 15 spokes into a five-spoke design. The rear, which resembled the 8 Series launched a few years later, had trapezoidal exhaust finishers and L-shaped LED taillights connected across the trunk.
Photo by: BMW
Photo by: BMW
Photo by: BMW
“They really trust our skill, our capacity of interpreting their design identity and the design values.”
Inside, Pininfarina enhanced BMW’s design language of the time, angling the controls toward the driver. An oblong opening in the roof allowed for extra light into the cabin, while the automaker claimed the coupe’s rear seat featured legroom “almost on a par with that of a large luxury sedan.”
Pininfarina added high-grade tobacco-brown leather from the Foglizzo leather factory, a headliner made with virgin wool, and a deep-pile carpet. It also sourced 48,000-year-old Kauri wood, “among the rarest timbers in the world,” to use throughout the cabin. The wood is native to New Zealand and has a unique grain that can shift colors from gold to red to brown, depending on the light and viewing angle.
Then Senior Vice President of BMW Group Design, Adrian van Hooydonk, said at the time of the car’s debut that the concept expressed “hallmark BMW values.”
The automaker never detailed the twin-turbocharged V-12 engine that powered the concept, only referring to the number of cylinders hiding under the hood. It likely used the eight-speed automatic and the 6.0-liter V-12 that propelled the 760i of the era, which made 535 horsepower and 553 pound-feet of torque and only powered the rear wheels.
Other handsome concept cars have shown up since the Gran Lusso; The Skytop, the Touring Coupe, and the Vision Neue Klasse. But the Gran Lusso was truly the last vestige of clean, minimalist design within the BMW lineup. It joins a long list of beautiful BMWs that never reached production.
38
BMW
