And I took it on a road trip almost immediately! The break-in service happens at 2k kms (fluid changes, software blocks removed, inspection) - I covered most of that distance in a single long weekend. 😁
Before I get to the photodump from the road trip and subsequent smoky-skied bunch of days, lemme tell you guys the story behind the car.
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The original dealer simply ordered the car for their inventory. Being an Ultimate Package car, a full Merino leather interior comes as standard, with no option for cloth like the non-Ultimate Pkg cars have. Plus, for MY20 only, a handful of Individual colors were included at no extra charge, one of which was the Speed Yellow my car is finished in.
Sometime around August or September of last year, the car arrived at the dealer... The Individual Speed Yellow looked great, but then they opened the door and...cloth seats!?!? WTF??
Turns out my car has an impossible configuration because of a mistake at the factory. 😮
So they parked it in their showroom, where it was still to be found in June of this year. A local guy who had just won the lottery walked in, sat in the car, and without even test driving it, said “I’ll take it.”
Despite that, the car was still sitting there a while after. “Red tape, red tape, I don’t have the money yet,” repeated the lottery winner every time he spoke with the dealership. After a month of this, the dealer got fed up and put the car back up for sale...
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Meanwhile on the other side of the country, I was sitting in the break room at work this past winter, perusing the BMW forums. I found out M4 production (for the final model year of this generation, no less) was to end early. Too early for me, so I slept on it - realizing that it’s my last chance, I decided to go for it anyway. And good thing I did - in March, I snagged one of the final four build slots. Success! 😁
But then Corona hit and BMW canceled my order, along with all orders that weren’t yet assigned a VIN...
It was still March at this point. I scoured dealer inventory across the country using as many online sources as I could find. There were four brand new M4 Competition manuals left in the country: one in the adjacent province, and the rest on the opposite coast. One of the latter had that Ultimate Package, which was five figures more than I wanted to spend with my very lean factory order...but just like that ultimately-futile order, the Ultimate Package car was also in Speed Yellow with cloth seats... 😬
When my salesguy told me they canceled my order, he mentioned that they can ship any new M4 found in any other BMW dealer’s inventory to their dealership, at no extra cost to me.
I was on the fence, though - an extra five figures was nothing to sneeze at. I told him I wasn’t really sure if I wanted to spring for an Ultimate Package car, even though it had the exact equipment I otherwise wanted (right down to the same special order color and rare cloth seats). I told him that given everything at this point, I wanted to try some competing cars out.
So in July, with the Corona situation being much more clear than it was in March, I spent a week test-driving a bunch of cars: a C63S, Carrera T, V8 Vantage, RS5, M2C and Challenger Hellcat. After all that, the M4 was still the favorite, and all four of those M4s were still available...
I called my salesguy the week after: “if you can get me that yellow one for a great price, I’m buying it today.” He does, so I do.
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Unbeknownst to me, the sold sign on the yellow one was taken off while I was doing my various test drives. Literally a week after they gave up on lottery guy, they get a call from my dealer securing the car for me!
With a heavily-delayed shipping trip now in the history books, the car’s finally mine, which means it’s time for that photodump.
