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Gabura to create BMW V8i, powered by S63Tu V8

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Via BBC:

The team at Gabura Racing Technologies, a motorsports engineering company with expertise in race transmissions and custom builds, has taken BMW’s plug-in hybrid i8 sportscar and turned it into a supercar. The Munich-based company (handy, yes?) has removed all vestiges of futuristic hybrid technology from the i8, and rather than plug in a power cord has plugged in a supertuned BMW S63 twin-turbo V8 — mounted in the front, no less. That engine, the M-version of the occasionally maligned and once-recalled N63 4.4-litre, already boasts 560 horses, and the boosted Gabura version (apparently pre-tweaked by BMW tuner Alpina) is said to add at least 200 more.

Gabura put this work-in-progress on display at the 2015 Professional MotorSport World Expo in Cologne, where the company made great pains to point out that this isn’t just a tune-up. They have, they say, completely emptied that aluminum and carbon i8 shell, and placed an entirely new car inside it.
The V8i is an exercise in marketing, perhaps, but it will yield a street-legal racecar of exceptional speed. We don’t know yet what kind of performance to expect (the stock i8 can hit 60mph in just 4.4 seconds), but we know that the i8’s curb weight is half a ton less than the M6 that the S63 engine normally powers. Oh, and Gabura specializes in racing transmissions, so expect a six-speed sequential manual mounted ahead of the rear axle. Back-of-the-envelope calculations say the V8i should be really, really fast.