Pro Golfer Wins BMW i8 Roadster After Scoring Hole-In-One

BY Brad Anderson | Posted on

A 23-year-old pro golfer walked away from last month’s BMW International Open not with a trophy in his hands, but the keys to a brand new i8 Roadster.

During the tournament’s second round, English golfer Aaron Rai got a hole-in-one on the 16th hole to claim the expensive and highly-desirable prize.

Remarkably, this is the fourth year BMW has offered its hole-in-one award and the fourth consecutive time that a player has walked away with a new BMW.

Rai certainly won the best car of the bunch. In 2012, Andrew Marshall won a 640i Gran Coupe, in 2014 James Heath was the recipient of an i8 Coupe, and the following year, Richie Ramsay walked away with an M760Li xDrive. The 7-Series is cool, but we’d take the i8 Roadster any day.

BMW commenced deliveries of the i8 Roadster towards the end of May in a special ceremony at BMW Welt in Munich.

Like the i8 Coupe, the Roadster is powered by a 1.5-liter three-cylinder engine mated to an electric motor. Combined grunt sits at 374 hp, allowing the sports car to reach 60 mph (96 km/h) in a brisk 4.4 seconds.

Visually, the i8 Roadster benefits from the facelifted look also applied to the Coupe last year. Changes over the original i8 are minor and include new headlights, a new air vent on the hood and redesigned wheels.

For the most part, such minor facelifts can come across a little lazy on the part of the car manufacturer. However, the original i8 had such a futuristic design that it barely even needed a facelift to keep looking fresh anyway.

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