Well, barring the outbreak of WW3 or some freak global breakdown of financial services, I will be putting in an order for a Monte Carlo Blue M3 Edition in about 3 weeks time. (Unless I can get some info on RD sometimes soon.)
I don't see why it's such bad value - you get individual paint, one outside the normal range at that and the 19" oem wheels. All the black accent bits I know can be bought separately, but I'm 10000% certain I won't have fitment issues with these so I'm happy with that. The mirrors are a nice touch and to be honest apart from may be a very subtle lip and whiter angel eyes, that's as far as I'm going to go with the exterior.
I don't consider myself a poser - I'd have chosen a Cayman, were I one - but my original plan was a SG and then to black everything out anyway. Then I was thinking of getting wheels that are 1.)black and 2.)look similar to the oem cos they look nice anyway. Plus while I like SG, I just wanted a more unique colour to my M3 (they all seem to be 90%AW, 4.5%Jb, 4.5%Jzb and 1%SG + I didn't really like any of the two blues). Had a mind to go with yellow, but Dakar Yellow seems too pale for my liking. Saw the pic of the Monte Carlo Blue and I fell in love. Does that make me a poser? I don't know...
But surely this is similar to BMW offering individual colours and individual trim... why would this be different?
I fully agree that BMW should have come up with a CSL and the idea of a limited run model with mainly exteior changes might upset the purists, but if you just take it as what it is - $,$$$ for exterior mods done back at the factory plus custom paint, then it's not so bad. I don't think it should be viewed in anyway as an alternative to a CSL, they're just not making the CSL yet, and they're not making claims that this is a new CSL
Personally, I wouldn't bother with an AW version, but the blue and the yellow I think are pretty neat.
Oh, and iirc, the exhausts will come in black also which will do nicely till I get my Gintani or Arkapovic (still haven't decided).