Some were there for the racing. Some for the engineering. Some for the crashes. But I was there for the memes. And boy, did Le Mans 2018 deliver.
I’m not much of a racing fan, so my understanding of the event is limited. Essentially, every year a bunch of cars go to LeMans, which is either a town or a track in probably France. They drive around said course, home of the infamous turn with which you are assuredly familiar, and at the end of 24 hours whoever is still running around and ahead of the other cars is the winner.
This year, BMW turned up with a racing-spec version of its 8 Series coupe. Naturally, this car raced in the same class as the Ford GT despite being entirely different in every way. Anyway, a small collision occurred between an M8 GTE and the Ford GT, which a racing fan screenshotting the incident.
Inexplicably—as all memes are truly born—the fan then enlarged the M8 in the picture, making it look massive next to the Ford.
The tweet was in Japanese, so we’re not 100 percent confident as to what it says. But shortly after, this tweet was followed up with another that claimed, according to online translation, that the real M8 is even bigger.
With that, the meme was born. Things, as they always do, spiraled, with the M8 eventually taking up the entire track.
On a serious note, our hearts are with the families of the baby Ford GTs that were tragically devoured by the Mega8.
And in the end, the M8 grew too big to be constrained to the track.