As long as you find a willing and cooperative dealer, are patient enough to wait for your order to arrive, and don’t mind spending around $5,000 on a special paint job, then BMW Individual will set you free from the limited color options offered for regular clients.
BMW’s Barbera Red Metallic is a shade you can find on any standard 3-Series E90/E92, but it was never an option on the regular catalogue for the M3. If a production list for the E9X M3s in North America compiled by the forum members of M3Post is correct, then only two Barbera Red M3s were made for this side of the world: one in sedan and another in coupe guise.
Now, we know how some of you like seeing these special colors, so after stumbling upon a used car ad for a BMW M3 Individual Barbera Red Metallic , we just had to share the pics, even though the low-mileage (3,138 miles), manual-gearbox-equipped 2011MY car has long been sold (for $64,900).
If the numbers hold true and only one E90 M3 was made in this specific shade for North America, then it comes with an interesting backstory, as according to M3Post member “Crunge“, he initially ordered a Moonstone-metallic M3 E90 Individual, but ended up receiving the Barbera Red M3…for European Delivery (!) back in 2010.
However, unlike the case of another BMW M3 Individual owner who ordered one color only to receive another, and had a problem convincing the Bavarians to “do the right thing”, Crunge’s experience with BMW’s customer service was far smoother.
Here’s what he wrote at the time on the M3Post forums:
“Be careful if you do go the Individual paint route. I ordered an E90 M3 in Moonstone for European Delivery in early August. I showed up at Die Welt to find a Barbera Red M3 at delivery. Needless to say, I was disappointed. I drove the Barbera Red M3 while in Germany and have it now in the US (just picked it up this weekend) while they build and deliver the Moonstone M3. The factory shutdown in August didn’t help with things, although I do get a 2011.5 model now.”
“The problem with Individual colors (AFAIK) is that you can’t tell on the build sheet, bmwusa.com online status page, etc. what the actual color is. All it lists is “special order color” or something to that effect. It isn’t even clear where the mix-up in the paint happened, whether on the dealer end, the factory, or somewhere in between, so I don’t have any guidance on how to prevent this from happening to others going down this route.”
By John Halas
PHOTO GALLERY
