The Inimitable Future-Tech 2015 BMW i8 — Feeling Chummy with Concept M4 and 1980 BMW M1 — Fleming Flashbacks

Did you guys ever read the James Bond continuation books? There have been dozens and dozens of writers who keep the series going — since the late 1970s, I believe, the publisher has been cranking out new James Bond adventures in print..

Do they pack the F-you-too-then-Sir swagger of Fleming chain-smoking at his typewriter? No, they generally do not.

But they do capture the fast-cars/legal-outlaw image that Mr. Bond so embodies.

Sidebar: I read all 22 (or whatever) of the original Bond books in a lightning-flash of perhaps five weeks. It was summer 1995 at the Hinsdale Public Library when I was 14. Too young to work? One might think! Unless you are a born worker whose tennis from 7a-11a left a long day open for idle hands.

I was a volunteer, technically-speaking, but was there M-F noon to five PM (on mandatory decree from my very annoyed mother.) The old crones at the Reference desk quickly ran out of things for me to do, so I would slink away to look for Absolut Vodka print ads for the collection, borderline racy/smutty literature, or…somewhere and read all day. When I ran out of Fleming’s Bond books, I was like a junkie seeking his next fix.

Enter, quasi-fan-fiction continuity Bond books! 

The BMW M1 is featured in one of my favorites of the ghost-written ones, called Zero Minus One, I believe. The car perfectly fit the high-speed castle escape Mr. Bond needed at the time.

The i8 is also a perfect fit for the aspiring Secret Agent Man in all of us. Have you seen this car in person yet? “Wow” barely does it justice.

The rear wings are completely original and impossible for any non-BMW company to copy. Why? They cannot be manufactured without BMW’s new alloy-backed carbon-fiber techniques.

Really stunning stuff, and I liked the mean shark-nose as well. In context with the M1, the i8 makes perfect sense.

Enjoy.

PS. Trying out some new fonts in this article. Need something higher in contrast, but changing global site defaults like that is easier-said-than-done.

The age-old question returns — serif or sans-serif? 

Journalism school principles say SS header with Serif body text, so that is likely in the future some time.

Boyz II Men… ABC… TBD…