• Rear seats for display purposes only
• Smallish but usable boot
• Fabric roof operates quickly

How much space is there?

The 8 Series Convertible is billed as a four seater but that’s no more true than it is for the Porsche 911 or Mercedes SL. The rear seats are suitable for small children (in small child seats) and do have Isofix mountings to make installation easier. As for adults, you could possibly fit somebody under 5’6” provided the driver was the same height, but don’t expect them to be comfortable.

Accessing the rear with the roof up requires some contortion, and headroom in the rear is limited with it up.

The rear seats become completely decorative if you’ve the wind deflector installed, which fits in easily and is useful for eliminating buffeting when the roof’s down. We suspect most people will treat their 8 Series Convertible as a two-seater with an extra bench for luggage. The front seats suffer no such issues, being large and electrically adjustable as standard.

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Boot space and storage

A portion of the 8 Series Convertible’s boot is taken up by the folding roof mechanism so it’s no surprise that it has less luggage space than the coupe – with 350 litres of space compared to 420 in the coupe. When the roof’s down, you get just 280 litres of space.

You do get a 50:50 split rear bench and a load-through facility so you can carry longer items, provided they’re quite narrow. Access to the boot is also good through a wide hatch.

Storage for smaller items in the cabin is a bit limited. You get a pair of cupholders ahead of the gear selector which won’t do for your Big Gulp but will happily take a normal coffee cup or bottle. The wireless charging pad for your phone sits ahead of this. The door pockets are slim, though, and the storage under the central armrest is shallow.

Is it easy to park?

Every 8 Series comes with a reversing camera and all-round parking sensors. These are very sorely needed because like most large convertibles visibility is poor especially to the rear. Putting the roof up exacerbates this, with a narrow rear window and huge blindspots around where the C-pillar would be on a hard-top.

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The 8 Series Convertible is a very large car, over 4.8m long and nearly 2m wide with long, heavy doors. Expect to do some squeezing if you’ve a narrow garage or parking space. You can however option BMW’s very clever Reversing Assistant, which is capable of getting you out of tight situations or repeating a tricky parking manoeuvre that you’ve saved.

Safety

• No Euro NCAP score
• Carbon Core construction
• Lots of standard tech

BMW hasn’t submitted the 8 Series Convertible for testing at Euro NCAP, so it’s hard to say how it’ll react in a crash. However, we can tell you however that the chassis of this car is very strong thanks to its Carbon Core structure, and that a new rollover protection system has been installed.

In the event of the car overturning two aluminium bars fitted within the head restraints are deployed, protecting up to four occupants. You also get a head-up display and Active Guard, with the following systems as standard:

• Collision warning
• Pedestrian warning
• Autonomous emergency braking
• Parking Assistant – rear-view camera and parking sensors

Optionally available is the Driving Assistant Professional pack with extra features such as steering and lane control assistant, and BMW Laserlight headlights – upgrading the standard adaptive LED items to offer double the lighting range of up to 600 metres ahead.

The parking cameras dotted around the 8 Series can also be used to record 20 seconds of footage on the BMW Drive Recorder, should you ever need to reference an incident.