This week a pretty special car, BMW’s i8 hybrid supercar was made available in Forza Horizon 3. The new car is part of the Rockstar Energy car pack. This pack contains seven cars, but for my money the biggest by a country mile is the i8.
I’ve never driven the BMW i8 in real life and seriously hope I get to one day, but now I have at least been behind the wheel in FH3. Its a stand out car, mostly for its striking futuristic looks, but also for its use of an F1-style hybrid powertrain. The i8 brings an electrically-powered front-drive system together with a 1.5-liter turbocharged engine powering the rear wheels. The two systems merge seamlessly for a driving experience like none other.
BMW build the body with carbon fiber to keep weight down and improve the power-to-weight ratio. This is a car that arrived as a concept like many others, but BMW had the courage to actually ship it, rather than tone it down to boring, a mistake almost everyone else makes. The reason we all go gaga over concept cars is because they’re different and new and we want to drive them on the road. Thankfully BMW understood that and delivered the car.
Those digital models are now in the hands of Turn10 and allows you to have a drive of this seriously fine piece of engineering.
Check out the video below which is a cut form a few clips of driving the BMW i8 around the Aussie world of Forza Horizon 3. The car is beautifully reproduced in the game and plenty of fun to cruise the streets of the Gold Coast in. Because the car features the best cars on the planet, its fast, but not the fastest in the game. The interesting part is the sound and that’s really hard to explain, its very different to the Model S, but seriously quiet.
My only criticism is that its the left hand drive version. Given the game is set in Australia (aka the RHD part of the world), it would have been great to see the Aussie version. Hopefully some iteration of the Forza franchise in the future allow for the driving position and dash to be flipped based on user preference, rather than an arbitrary modelling of LHD or RHD.
Other cars in the pack include the 2015 Volvo V60 Polestar, 2015 Radical RXC Turbo, 1972 Ford Falcon XA GT-HO, 1987 Nissan Skyline GTS-R (R31), 2014 Ford #11 Rockstar F-150 Trophy Truck and the 2016 Bentley Bentayga. If you bought the car pass as an uber-fan of the game, then you’ll get them for free. If not, you’ll need to buy the DLC for A$10.45 from the Xbox or Windows Store.
