About

Big M8 is a series of photoshopped images of enlarged BMW's spec racer to highlight the differences between the M8 and the Ford GT at the 2018 24 Hours of Le Mans automotive events.

Origin

On June 16th and 17th, 2018, the 86th annual 24 Hours of Le Mans automobile race was held, a 24-hour long endurance competition in which race cars compete for one entire day.^[1]

During the race, the BMW M8 GTE was criticized for competing in the same class as the Ford GT, despite its difference in size. At one point, the M8 and the Ford GT collided with each other, highlighting their size difference.

That day, Twitter ^[2] @yt5528 tweeted a photo of the M8 photoshopped enlarged. The post (shown below) received more than 900 retweets and 1,300 likes in five days.

Spread

Following the popularity of the tweet, other fans responded to the photograph with variations of the M8 looking even bigger (example below, left).

On June 17th, Twitter^[3] user @Yanparap posted a series of larger M8s (examples below, center and right). The post received more than 1,600 retweets and 2,500 likes in four days.

On June 20th, Twitter^[4] user @BaronVonClutch tweeted the original picture. The wrote, "In the interests of # Journalismism , this is the original image that spawned the meme. For reference, the height of the GT Ford GTE is approx. 43-44 inches, while the height of the BMW M8 GTE is about 48 inches. # TheMans24." The post (shown below) 40 retweets and 65 likes in 24 hours.

That day, Jalopnik^[5] published an article about the memes.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References