HOME RUN

We take the BMW M8 to a familiar road to find out if it is worthy of being a flagship to a brand with a storied past

- AATISH MISHRA

HERE’S HOW EVERY OTHER MORNING AT evo India usually works — wake up at an hour that most of your friends are contemplating going to bed, drink copious amounts of coffee to exorcise the sleep out of you, drive for an hour (sometimes more) to the shoot location in question and then wait for the sun to rise. ‘The golden hour’ as photographers like to call it — when the sun’s light is soft and makes for great pictures — isn’t really an hour. Here in India, we’re closer to the equator and the golden ‘hour’ is reduced to a few golden minutes. You’d know why if you paid attention in geography class.

A lot of our understanding of the car happens on the drive to that shoot location. The journey involves you getting out of the city, hitting the bypass roads around the city, the open highway and then finally the corners up the mountain we’re shooting at that day. It’s a progression that allows you to get to grips with a new car. Slower speeds in the city first, poking around at things in the cabin to make sense of them, and then slowly picking up the pace the further away from home you get. Forgive my weak attempt at a metaphor, but the entire experience is like an onion. You peel away at the layers of the driving experience till you get to the core. Except with the BMW M8 Coupe, I didn’t peel away any layers as much as slice it, chop it, dice it with a knife. There may have been tears.