The Porsche Taycan Turbo S is undoubtedly a remarkable vehicle. Just watch it go flat out on the Autobahn. However, the BMW M8 Gran Coupe is no slouch either, and it's one of our favorite big Bimmers. Both the Porsche and the BMW are luxurious, stylish, and fast German super sedans, but each goes about its business in very different ways.
On the one hand, the Porsche Taycan uses electricity to produce up to 750 horsepower and 774 lb-ft of torque. On the other, the M8 Gran Coupe prefers a 4.4-liter twin-turbo V8 with as much as 617 hp and 553 lb-ft of torque, but it's also lighter. So which all-wheel-drive luxury missile is quickest? Motorsport Magazine put them to the test.
Unfortunately for the gas-engined machine, the electric response of motors that don't need gearboxes or high revs to operate most efficiently is more than enough to overcome a weight difference in this case, but it's still interesting to note that the Bimmer wasn't very far behind, despite a huge deficit in both power and torque.
The cars did the standing kilometer (0.62 miles) with just five-tenths of a second between them, although the visible gap makes the race look a lot worse for the M8. If you watched to the end of the video, there's a race from 62 mph to 124 mph, which the Porsche again wins, but the margin here seems a little smaller. In fact, the M8 may actually have caught the Taycan had the race been allowed to continue to higher speeds.
Whatever the outcome over a longer distance may have been, the Taycan Turbo S is a serious contender for the most exciting electric car currently on sale. We've seen it beat Tesla's best, and we know that it handles as well as it goes in a straight line, but are facts and figures enough to convince the average buyer to choose one over a supposedly more practical gas-powered car?
Maybe, but it's becoming increasingly difficult to pass judgment on electric cars when they continue to eviscerate the established order and annihilate the fossils of the past. Here's to a fun future, even if exhaust notes are absent from it.