Straightline

File this one away in the “don’t believe everything you read on the Internet" bin. Way back in August of 2006, a member of m3post.com let loose with what he claimed was official pricing on the 2008 BMW M3. He had everything from base price to the options list, and it was all from a friend who had “good reliable connections at BMWNA and a BMW Dealer.”

We were skeptical. For a car that wasn’t scheduled to go on sale for at least another year, it seemed odd that BMW had already set pricing. Then we had our own data analyst look into the “official” information and it looked even more suspicious.

Fast forward to the present. We now have official pricing from BMW, so we thought it might be interesting to see just how credible that “reliable connection” was back in 2006. Turns out, not very reliable at all.



For starters, his base price for the M3 coupe was over $3,000 off the mark. And the “SMG III” transmission that was supposedly standard? It’s actually a double clutch setup and it’s a $2,700 option. Whoops.

Look further down the options list and the mistakes just keep piling up. There’s no $1,900 option for “M Multifunction Seats with Active Width Adjustment” nor is there a Head Up Display for $1,000. The Premium package is $1,900 not $3,100, and there are no less than eight options missing completely.

In other words, the information was pure speculation, crap if you will. Keep that in mind the next time you see official looking documents posted on the web from a “reliable source”.