Rich Rebuilds Takes His Modified BMW i8 To The Drag Strip

In his quest to make his BMW i8 as fast as he thinks it needs to be based on its looks, Rich Rebuilds has made another modification to the performance PHEV. In his latest video, he not only installs a louder exhaust, but he also removes an intake flap to allow the engine to breathe more easily.

You may remember that in his previous video, he remapped the i8’s 1.5-liter three-cylinder turbocharged engine. This was done in order to extract more power with the end goal of making the car quicker. Has it worked?

Well, after fitting the aforementioned custom exhaust, Rich proceeds to take his i8 to the drag strip where it achieves quarter-mile times of around 12.2 - 12.3 seconds, with a trap speed of just under 115 mph (185 km/h). Stock, an i8 can still dip below the 13-second mark, so the modifications have made the car a little bit faster.

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What’s next for Rich’s modded i8? Well, in order to make it even faster, he’s going to have to swap out the stock turbo and also fit the car with a custom downpipe. That should be enough to drop its quarter-mile time below the 12-second mark, depending on how extreme he wants to go with the turbo/downpipe combo.