BMW Individual M850i Night Sky is a one-off made with meteorites
BMW Individual Manufaktur is willing to go to the ends of the earth and beyond to create customized BMWs like this.
You might not hear about it very often, but BMW has its own bespoke individualization program where, in exchange for a vast sum of money, the automaker will deck out a new BMW to match whatever's in the owner's imagination. Its latest one-off celebrates a meteor shower with some (literally) out-of-this-world additions.
BMW this week unveiled the BMW Individual M850i xDrive Coupe Night Sky. That brevity-averse name lets us know that the final creation is based on the BMW M850i xDrive all-wheel-drive sports coupe. The last bit, though, is the important part -- it's what lets you know that this car's style is all about staring into the great beyond of space.
The automaker used actual, honest-to-goodness meteorites inside the cabin. Meteoritic material appears on the start button, the center console's trim plate, the gear selector and the iDrive knob. It also appears in the doorsills, in conjunction with an illuminated badge.
The exterior changes are subtle until you get up close to 'em.
Some meteorites display what's called the Widmanstätten pattern, which is a unique geometric layering of nickel-iron crystals in a meteorite. While it's not possible to recreate this process on Earth, BMW took the general look and incorporated it in all sorts of places, including the headliner, the center console trim finisher and the stitching pattern for the seats. BMW even milled the pattern into the brake discs, for cryin' out loud, and it 3D-printed a special set of brake calipers for the car. The pattern continues outside on various trim pieces, like the mirror caps and front splitters.
The interior is decked out in a three-color layout that blends blue, white and silver. The center console armrest is littered with LEDs to make the armrest light up like the night sky. Even the car's paint job is meant to resemble the sky, with each of the paint job's three clear coat layers rocking particles of varying sizes.
Underneath all that fancy kit, it's still the same ol' M850i, which is to say, it's still one heck of a good sports coupe. Its 4.4-liter, twin-turbocharged V8 puts out an ample 523 horsepower and 553 pound-feet of torque, sent to all four wheels by way of an eight-speed automatic transmission. With a starting price of $111,900, it's already plenty expensive, but if you want to dump even more money into a creation that's all your own, BMW Individual Manufaktur is ready to help.
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