The automotive marketplace is replete with all sorts of cars - including among them plug-in hybrids and sports cars. But which is the hottest-selling car to check both of those boxes?

According to BMW, it's the i8 Roadster, which recently took the place of the i8 coupe as "the world's most widely sold plug-in hybrid sports car." Which makes sense, because the i8 is also one of the only plug-in hybrid sports cars on the market - and the only one currently on sale in America. So we suppose the i8 also the slowest-selling plug-in hybrid sports car, too.

Can that really be the case? Well, yes. It can, and it is – as long, that is, as you define a "sports car" as strictly a two-door, and exclude four-door "coupes" whose manufacturers describe as "sports cars."

The Porsche 918 Spyder was a plug-in hybrid sports car, but it ended its production run more than four years ago now. The Ferrari SF90 Stradale will fit the same bill, but it hasn't quite reached the market yet. And Koenigsegg has long since sold all 80 examples of the Regera it will ever make. But those are supercars. Hypercars, even.

So what about (relatively) more "accessible" sports cars with plug-in hybrid powertrains? Well, the Cadillac ELR has long since been discontinued, and the Polestar 1 isn't available just yet. And the Acura NSX and Lexus LC 500h, while hybrids, don't have plugs.

That leaves just the i8, of which BMW apparently now sells more Roadster variants than coupes. So there you have it, the world's top-selling PHEV sports car, even if it only sold 772 of them in the United States last year. But that's barely more than one percent of the number of Mustangs sold here in 2018, which ranks as the top-selling sports coupe worldwide.