BMW built four pre-production 1M Coupes. Three went to the crusher. The fourth became a pace car, a magazine cover star, and a piece of the brand’s lore, all because someone at BMW North America decided it was too good to destroy.
The Petersen Automotive Museum recently shared the full story of chassis 708 in a new video featuring BMW North America veteran Thomas Plucinsky. The car’s journey from expendable test mule to prized collection piece reads like a comedy of corporate improvisation and tight deadlines.
All four prototypes rolled out in Alpine White, wrapped in camouflage, and served their time as engineering and emissions vehicles. Standard procedure says they get recycled once they’ve done their job. Three of them did. But BMW’s U.S. arm had a marketing hole to fill, and no production cars were ready yet.
So the team at Woodcliff Lake, New Jersey, repainted the surviving prototype in Valencia Orange, the color BMW had chosen as the 1M’s launch signature. The paint was barely dry when they shipped it south to Florida for the Rolex 24 at Daytona in January 2011. You can still see the evidence today.
Lift the hood and the underside is white. Stone chips reveal white paint underneath the orange. BMW simply ran out of time to do it properly.
The drive from New Jersey to Daytona became one of BMW’s earliest social media stunts. The driver posted the car’s location along the route, inviting enthusiasts to come see the bright orange coupe in person. People showed up, took photos, and the buzz started building before the car even reached the track.
At Daytona, IMSA fitted it with a roof-mounted light bar and a rear-facing camera. A thick overnight fog kept the 1M on track for roughly three hours of pace car duty, its camera feeding live footage of trailing race cars to the television broadcast. For a vehicle that was supposed to be scrap metal, it was pulling its weight.
Then came the Road & Track cover. BMW had no press fleet 1Ms available, so the pre-production car was the only option. The automaker agreed to lend it on one condition: no photos under the hood.
Road & Track, being Road & Track, published a shot of the engine bay anyway. The white paint underneath was visible for anyone paying attention. Munich was not amused. The BMW North America employee who arranged the loan caught the fallout.
The car went on to star in three BMW Canada commercials, including drift sequences, and showed up at Bimmerfest in California. By that point, enthusiasts recognized it on sight. The white engine bay had become its fingerprint.
BMW produced just 740 examples of the 1M for North America, and chassis 708 is counted among them despite never being sold to the public. Valencia Orange was the most popular color, followed by Alpine White and Black Sapphire. Total global production hit 6,309 units before the model was discontinued.
The real fight happened internally. As a pre-production vehicle, chassis 708 was still slated for destruction even after its marketing tour. A handful of people inside BMW North America argued its history made it irreplaceable. They eventually won that argument.
The car sits in BMW’s collection now, its rushed paint job and white underhood surfaces intact. Nobody plans to fix those imperfections. They are the story.
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