BMW i8 Versus Messerschmitt (Or: Where Do Ideas Come From?)

"NickMaronese" (NickMaronese) 10/17/2016 at 11:42 • Filed to: Canadalopnik, Show-Off, supercar, microcar, BMW i8, Messerschmitt

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Sometimes, inspiration comes from the weirdest places. Let me give you, for example, the hitherto-hidden back story behind our latest video, in which we !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! to see which turns more heads.

About 18 months ago, I met a lovely young woman who, besides apparently being an up-and-coming talent in her field and total bad-ass, was very much into modern sports cars and supercars.

Lucky for her, this was roughly around the same time last year that I was offered the chance to drive a McLaren 650S for a day. Guess who got to ride shotgun?

We spent that day pushing our kilometre-cap to the limit, mostly via a long drive to the city limits where we entered a car show. The idea was to meet a friend with a Citroen 2CV there (actually my former editor’s former car) and !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! .

I’d met more than a handful of microcar enthusiasts and owners over the past years, and almost all of them liked to boast about how their quirky, cheap cars turned more heads than a Ferrarborghini Fastarossa or whatever. So I decided to put that claim to the test.

It didn’t really work. We were in a far-off corner of a way-too-big show, and our lovely McLaren supplier surprised us with a car with a can’t-miss-it racing-style wrap. (The 2CV, on the other hand, was grey and blue, making it a totally unfair fight.)

I wrote my story, but decided I’d have to revisit the concept another time.

This friend of mine loves – loves – Mercedes-Benzes , particularly the G-Wagen and AMG GT. So I’ll admit it, I was kind of thinking of excuses to get my hands on an AMG. That’s when it struck me: microcar-vs-supercar, round two!

The final piece of the puzzle? A former co-worker was re-entering the freelance video scene and was itching to try something with us, so now I could pull this off on film . And, hey, why not make it a three-part series, with three different super- and microcars facing off at separate events?

We couldn’t get a lock on an AMG GT, but this i8 was just as much a blast. My friend missed out on that ride, but did get to enjoy the car in the second vid in our series, a brand-new 580-hp V10 [REDACTED].

And now I’ve a wicked new video series to share with y’all centred on a still-unanswered question: between a supercar and a microcar, which would turn more heads?

!!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! and let me know below.

TheRealBicycleBuck > NickMaronese 10/17/2016 at 13:24

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No-can-do on the video.

I’m running Chrome 53.0.blah.blah.blah.

Jonee > NickMaronese 10/17/2016 at 14:20

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The video doesn’t like Chrome, or maybe vice versa, but as microcar guy myself, I know the answer is Messerschmitt. Everyone loves a microcar. I once literally parked my Goggomobil next to a goddam Tucker at a show in Massachusetts once and everyone turned around and immediately mobbed me.

NickMaronese > TheRealBicycleBuck 10/17/2016 at 14:47

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Awww, poop. Will replace with the YouTube version shortly.