BMW Concept Skytop stuns Como

BMW has simultaneously thrown its design team backwards and forwards with the stunning Concept Skytop, which has debuted at this year’s Concorso d’Eleganza on Lake Como, Italy.

The imposing targa-roofed Concept Skytop follows last year’s stunning Concept Touring Coupe, designed by Australian Calvin Luk, and was presented in similarly heavy rain.

With hints of both the BMW Z8, which ran from 1998 to 2003, and the 1956 BMW 503, the Concept Skytop sadly does not seem destined for production.

Standout flying buttresses run from the B-pillar to the Kamm-style tail and the Concept Skytop also features twin tailpipes and ultra-thin LED tail-lights.

With a removable leather roof system running between the top of the windscreen frame to the B-pillar, there are strong hints of several other non-BMW models, too, including the Fiat X1-9.

The ridiculous thing about the concept is how production-ready it actually looks, and how much positive reaction it has already received.

While BMW insists it’s a styling exercise to support the Concorso d’Eleganza event that it sponsors, the Skytop is actually a running car.

It’s powered by the most powerful current BMW engine, the S63B44T4 twin-turbo V8 from the M8 Competition, in which the engine is good for 460kW/740Nm and pushes it to 100km/h in 3.2 seconds.

That car also employs an eight-speed automatic transmission and all-wheel drive, in a strong hint about what else lies underneath the Concept Skytop’s freshly crafted skin.

The head of BMW Group Design, Adrian van Hooydonk, pointed out that the two-seater carries over the Z8’s raised, full-length spine from the tip of the bonnet through to the trailing edge of the bootlid.

“The BMW Concept Skytop is a truly unique and exotic design, in the tradition of the Concorso d’Eleganza Villa d’Este,” van Hooydonk said.

“It offers a combination of driving dynamics and elegance at the highest level, comparable to its historic ancestors, like the BMW Z8 or BMW 503.”

It’s a surprisingly clean-cut car, especially after recent BMWs that haven’t exactly drawn universal praise for their aesthetics, and it features broad and strong rear haunches plus a shark-like, forward-leaning kidney-grille nose.

Its rear rollover bar is coated in leather and the roof can be removed in two parts, not unlike Donkervoort’s F22 roof.

Unusually, the Skytop’s exterior paint is graduated from a reddish-brown colour at the roofline to silver on the bodywork.

It runs a full, custom-leather interior and BMW’s iDrive multimedia system, complete with the yet-to-make-production Operating System 9.

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