What happens when you take BMW’s new M4 and put it up against the new BMW i8 hybrid in a drag race? That’s what Sebastian Varchmin, reporter for Germany’s AUTO BILD and another driver did recently. On paper, the cars look somewhat evenly matched, but the real world is often very different. Here’s the tale of the tape on both performance cars.

BMW i8

Representing the future of high-performance sports cars is the new BMW i8. Its 1.5-liter three-cylinder turbocharged gas engine combined with an electric motor produces 357 horsepower and 420 lb. ft of torque that gives the sports car a 0-60 mph sprint time of 4.2 seconds. It has an electronically-limited top speed of 155 mph. The supercar weights in at 3455 lb. That’s due in part to its light carbon fiber reinforced central tub. It’s a revolutionary yet accessible hybrid supercar and delivers the kind of high-performance that would excite any driving enthusiast. Type of transmission: 6 Speed automatic (rear) / 2 Speed automatic (front).

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BMW M4

The new 2015 BMW M4 is powered by the 3.0 liter inline six-cylinder TwinPower Turbo engine producing a total output of 431 hp (317 kW), with a peak torque of 550 Nm (406 lb-ft). BMW says the Coupe will sprint from 0-100 km/h in 4.3 seconds with an electronically limited top speed of 250 km/h (155 mph). The M4 weights in at 3465 lb.

It looks like the BMW i8 would be at a big disadvantage with 357hp vs 431hp for the M4. But the i8 has more torque at 420 lb. ft vs 406 for the M4. There’s not much difference in weight between the two cars and we don’t know what the two drivers weight is. Watch the video below and see which car wins. The YouTube video is in German, but you will get the idea.

Spoiler alert: The new BMW i8 wins by a number of car lengths and it looks like the hybrid got a good hole shot off the line. The 2015 BMW M4 had quite a bit of tire spin and lost valuable time at the start. We would like to see a number of runs to see more results, but it shows that the new i8 with all that torque is very quick off the line and performance estimates from the manufactures are just that, estimates.