BMW’s showpiece for the 2024 Villa d’Este Concorso d’Elegance provides some welcome relief from the company’s recent styling trend towards challenging brutalism. This beautiful open-top two-seater may even be headed for limited production, if the rumours hold true.
Every year, as springtime rolls around at the scenic shores of Lake Como in Italy, a very exclusive motoring event is hosted on the lawns at the Villa d’Este hotel. A large part of the event consists of the “concorso d’elegance", where proud owners have their priceless classic- and vintage cars judged by a panel of experts.
Being announced as the winner of this show is arguably the highest accolade in the classic car world, with previous victors including a 1935 Duesenberg, a 1937 Bugatti Type 57, and a 1968 Alfa Romeo 33 Stradale. This year’s event saw a 1930 Alfa Romeo 8C 2300 Spider walking away with the overall honours.
BMW and Villa d’Este
BMW plays a pivotal role in this event, having thrown its corporate weight behind it as organiser and first-tier sponsor since 1999. Consequently, the German manufacturer has taken to displaying its latest concept cars alongside the classics to give connoisseurs a taste of BMWs to come.
Truth be told, the last decade or so has delivered precious few beautiful BMW concepts to Lake Como. Last year’s Z4-based Concept Touring was prettier than most of its predecessors at this event, but even that was all aggression and very little elegance. The Touring was still more pleasing to the eye than the bewinged 2015 CSL Hommage concept or the awkward 2011 328 Hommage, mind you.
All these concepts previewed some future BMW styling cues, though. The latest hamster-tooth grille had an early outing on the 2011 “328” concept, and the 2015 “3.0 CSL” concept introduced the disjointed and angular styling lines currently found on many production BMWs.
BMW Concept Skytop
This recent history indicates that BMW could be heading back towards a smoother, sleeker design language in a decade or so. The 2024 Villa d’Este show car, named the “Concept Skytop” in BMW-speak, showcases bespoke luxury and nautical styling themes, smoothly wrapped in possibly the most harmonious design to originate from BMW’s studios in decades.
As with most cars on display at Villa d’Este, the BMW Concept Skytop is meant to appeal to the extremely well-off customer, and offers a glimpse of personalised long-distance road travel in a world where air travel is becoming increasingly onerous and impersonal. With this in mind, the Skytop is a two-seater cocoon of opulence, with the sky on display through its removable roof instead of through a tiny aeroplane window.
Flowing sportiness meets athletic muscularity
This paragraph header above is directly derived from the official BMW press release regarding the Concept Skytop, and the words are attributed to Adrian van Hooydonk. Casting our memories back about a quarter of a century, we recall that this gentleman was responsible for drafting the original “Bangle butt” which besmirched so many BMWs around that time, so it’s nice to see that he finally managed to find a competent optometrist and got around to making BMWs beautiful again.
Marketing jargon and gratuitous sarcasm aside, the Concept Skytop really is breathtaking in its elegance and detailing. The shape takes cues from the E52 Z8 roadster and the Z07 concept car and classic 503 and 507 which came before it, and its rear-biased design and pronounced haunches harken back to coach-built luxury cars from the 1930s. The flattened and fattened grille up front is equally encouraging, and the all-LED light clusters are beautiful enough to be considered artistry.
Instead of the abrupt slashes and gratuitous creases which afflict many modern BMWs, the few pronounced character lines on the Skytop merely highlight the sleek shape and hint at the traditional Hofmeister kink in the rear roof pillar. The interior is no less special, with crystal highlights and red leatherwork inspired by hand-made saddlery.
M8 hardware makes limited production a possibility
As with the Z8 roadster, the BMW Concept Skytop is based on the mechanical hardware of the top-performing BMW M-car. The E39 M5 donated its running gear to the Z8, while the “most powerful V8 engine in the BMW drivetrain portfolio” is at the core of the Concept Skytop - meaning the stonking twin-turbo V8 with around 460 kW as found in the XM and M8 Competition.
This makes it quite easy to imagine a future range-topping BMW coupe taking on a similar styling theme, perhaps even providing a glimpse of what the 8 Series successor could look like. Even given the current parts bin, it’s not inconceivable that a limited-production halo BMW could be devised with a combination of the M8 platform and the Skytop’s styling.
In fact, some rumours even contend that a small number of such Skytop-derived production cars may actually see the light of day. If this turns out to be true, the production volume will be extremely low (around 50 cars in total). Their pricetags will obviously be astronomical on account of being hand-built at BMW’s Dingolfing facility, where this Concept Skytop was painted by a master technician.
An asking price of at least half-a-million Euro (about R 10-million) would not be unfeasible, and there’s no doubt that extremely wealthy collectors would snatch up every possible example. Who knows, maybe one of these mooted BMW Skytop production cars may scoop the ultimate honours at the 2080 Villa d’Este Concorso d’Eleganza, or inspire BMW’s concept for the 2050 event…
Martin Pretorius
- Proudly ALL THINGS MOTORING
