Sorry Scott, but no change in lighting is going to make YMB anything but strikingly unattractive and ill-fitted for an M car. There are going to be plenty of people that lap this color up just like there were plenty of lunatics that purchased Laguna Seca Blue. Just because people buy the color, doesn't mean that it's well-suited for the car's aesthetic. Let's look at atrocious stock color selection for the E92 M3, and keep in mind that
I spent a ton of time with each color on many paint corrections:
Alpine White - Essential but basic color that many will buy
Jet Black - Essential but basic color that many will buy
Jerez Black - Black w/ blue metallic flakes, too similar to Jet Black, essence of color only visible under direct sunlight
Interlagos Blue - Dark blue that only looks attractive under direct sunlight, overlaps with LeMans
LeMans Blue - Too similar to Interlagos (dark blue), not particularly interesting and fairly bland, overlaps with Interlagos
Melbourne Red - Possibly the most dull and lifeless color ever introduced on a BMW. Bland and slightly maroon in tone make it unfitting for an M car
Silverstone II - Essential but basic color that many will buy
Sparkling Graphite - A dull, dark grey w/ little personality, overlaps to some degree w/ Space Grey
Space Gray - A masculine, aggressive metallic color that brought out the beautiful lines of the M3.
And now here we go again with a color selection that is bland, unattractive, and ill-matched with the M4's styling. A color shouldn't have to be seen under "specific lighting conditions" in order to be attractive. A color should look fantastic in the dark, under direct sunlight, and under overcast skies.
When will BMW finally grow a pair and offer a stock color selection that has some spirit and aggression in it? Oh right, probably never because that would steal the thunder of much of the Individual line. It worked on me: I bought a Monte Carlo Blue E92 M3. That was a color that fit the styling of the car to a
tee.
This is exactly what I'm talking about. You're saying "Either buy this vomit-inducing color or spend $5,000."
Sometimes I never understand the thought process behind a lot of BMW's decisions. You guys have the intelligence, taste, and talent to engineer a work of art like the M4, and then completely drop the ball when it comes to one of the most important elements of car design: Color selection. And I would be shocked to hear that there's any sort of exhaustive selection process behind these colors such as focus groups or internal polling. How come BMW M can't choose a color palette for the M3 that suits the car's styling: aggressive but not excessive, classy, and refined. The E36 might have been the last generation of M3s that had a decent color palette to choose from.
But none of this matters because BMW will continue to keep the decent colors behind the Individual paywall. That's a choice that I'm sure will net BMW a few more dollars, but does absolutely nothing for the people that have stuck with the brand for some time. This kind of behavior is exactly the reason my next car will be a Tesla Model S.