I just returned from a week in Europe for BMW’s Ice Training Max in the new G8X platform, specifically the G82 RWD Comp. This is the second time I’ve done this…the first was 2 years ago in F8X cars right before Covid and was a spectacular failure as I crashed hard during the snowmobile side tour and spent a week and a half in hospital with a collapsed lung, 4 broken ribs and a shattered collarbone. But, that’s a separate story.
I was super excited to get to try it out again! BMW offers 2 Ice Trainings at their winter test facility in Arjeplog, Sweden. One is a 4-day, 3-night Ice Training and the other is a 5-day, 4-night Ice Training Max. The longer program obviously offers more seat time, but also more advanced drifting techniques and courses, as well as the chance to drive the F82 M4 CS based Ice Racer. Each course starts and ends with a semi-chartered pack-‘em-in sardine can flight from Munich full of mostly auto engineers from all the big German brands. Lodging and food is provided by BMW and, aside from lunch at the facility on the frozen lake, is all hosted at the Hotel Kraja in Arjeplog. It’s a fairly nice little hotel with decent food. I’ll provide a little day-by-day run down.
Day 1: Depart LAX for Munich (MUC). Glorious sunset on the way out.
Day 2: It's so nice to see the Bavarian countryside on the ride in. Been too long. Head into city for dinner, beers and obligatory Marienplatz shot.
Day 3: Depart super early from Munich to Arvidsjaur (AJR). 100km bus ride to directly to the test facility and the cars. About 2.5 hours warm-up driving today, followed by dinner at the hotel.
Day 4: Breakfast and briefing at the hotel then mostly drills today. Circles, figure-8s, guitars, slaloms. A little bit of small course driving. Dinner back at the hotel followed by a fleeting glimpse of Northern Lights.
Day 5: Breakfast then all day driving. Today is the only truly snowy/blustery day. More advanced drills, giant skid pad (think 100M diameter) and larger courses. Today we also get the opportunity to drive the G80 xDrive comp and it is an absolute beast and it was Mintgrun! More on this later. Dinner back at the hotel.
Day 6: Breakfast then all day driving. More giant skid pad and complex courses, including training for Ice Racer course followed by a few laps in the Ice Racer. The Ice Racer has extremely narrow tires with giant spikes. As such, it is an absolute animal and quite hard to drive vs. the stock cars riding on studded winter tires – 245 35 19 all around for those wondering. Dinner back at the hotel.
Day 7: Breakfast then about 2 hours of driving, all on the largest course offered which happens to be about 3 miles…massive for a 20-30 mph sideways affair! Pile back into the bus and drive back to the airport for the slog back to Munich. Dinner and drinks in Munich.
Day 8: Fly home to LAX. Nice to come home to 72 degrees and a glorious SoCal sunset.
Impressions. The G8X is a great car overall, and I was definitely online building them in the last week. The best was the xDrive. The xDrive we got to try out the one afternoon was such a beast. Drifting the rear-drive comp cars we spent nearly the entire time in was like a delicate Waltz. The AWD version was like a techno rave meets heavy metal concert. Just pound it the entire time.
It was hard to get a sense of what these cars will be like on the road...they feel great for a week on the ice, but we're sliding all over and it's a relatively stressless experience. So, no idea of how heavy they really feel or how they ride, except you can tell they are bigger. I will say the carbon buckets are really cool, but they would be absolutely annoying to live with on any sort of road trip, as your legs are sort of forced to always be in a "focused" position. Interior quality is a step up for sure. The cars we used had developed some rattles, but they spent the better part of 10k miles bouncing around and crashing into snow, so that's to be expected. The sound is better than the last car, but only just. They are definitely more insulated than the old. That said, the general high-rev noise is just as annoyingly harsh as the previous car. The IOM green is definitely a winner.
Overall, the new car is definitely nice, but as time separates me from it, I'm not sure it's worth it as an upgrade from the M2C I have. I specced either a base car with a stick at mid-70s or an xDrive comp at low 80s. It's not much if you look at them as basically a replacement for what the M5 used to be. It's actually a downright steal. That said, it does seem a tad much for what the M3 always was.
Will I eventually end up with one? There's a decent chance, as I refuse to buy a Mexican-built BMW. That eliminates the G87 for me. As an aside, we saw a couple G87s lurking around the test center. I abided by the "no photos in the restricted area," so, sorry, I have nothing to show you all. Same goes for the G81 on the photos...really wish we could get that in the States, though. The elongated body really fits the design language of the front much better.
A one minute video I made for the gram follows below. Intentionally included a disproportionate number of crashes for effect...
Enjoy!