Continuing it’s panicked move to get with new trends, BMW is announcing it will be producing its long awaited 2+2 hybrid sports car for public sale. 

BMW is usually on the cutting edge of automotive development. Heck, the company often is the one carrying the knife. For whatever reason, its work in the hybrid field has been pathetic. Why “pathetic”? Well, not only has it not done anything significant in my opinion, but one has to consider the company spent hundreds of millions of dollars in Formula One where hybrid systems like KERS were mandatory, yet still can’t seem to come up with anything very interesting. 

In truth, BMW has never shown much interest in the hybrid or electric car market. They’ve talked a lot about it, but the releases were pedestrian at best and downright pieces of crap in other areas. If one could say a car company was going through the motions, BMW was doing it. I say this as a former happy owner of a Z3 and current owner of a Mini Cooper [owned by BMW]. 

Well, things are changing. Apparently the Board of Directors was given some better coffee and realized they had fallen well behind what other companies were doing. BMW is now launching hybrids and electric car production efforts like mad. The latest news in this regard is the announcement the company will launch the 2+2 hybrid sports car it showed off in a 2009 car show. 

The unnamed car is based on BMW Vision EfficientDynamics. It has the new swoop hood design seen on the Series 6, but with a shorter back end. I hate to say it, but the car looks like a beefed up Pontiac Ferrero or whatever the hell that abomination was called. Regardless, one has to think BMW will clean up the design a bit before naming and releasing the car. 

While the looks might be ghastly, the performance is not. The car will do 0 to 60 in about 4.8 seconds. This is not a blindingly fast time, but it is pretty quick for a mass produced hybrid. It doesn’t come close to touching the Tesla, but it’ll press you back against your seat nice and firmly. 

So, what’s the name of this beauty going to be? No idea. The company hasn’t named it yet so you’ll just need to keep an eye out for “BMW hybrid sports car” developments.