Quote:
Originally Posted by mkoesel
For some arbitrary subset of the available Individual colors, sure. But that misses the point entirely. The cost has nothing to do with the color of the paint in question.
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Correct, apart from some really exotic colors. BMW claims they will put on any other manufacturer's color for 10.000€ over here in Germany - this offer is only for M cars.
Quote:
Originally Posted by mkoesel
BMW charges extra for Individual paint because the car has to be taken off the line and put through a seperate painting process. They pass the cost of this onto the consumer, and of course make a healthy profit on it as well, just like on every other product they sell.
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Nope for the first part: these cars are not taken off the line. Matter-of-fact the production is controlled in such a way that there are a number of cars of the same color one after another, but after a certain number of cars, the paint HAS to be changed, even if there were more cars of the same color. However, it is correct that the seldom-used colors make changes neccessary more often and a bit of paint is wasted during the change. All colors are water-based, even the exotic ones, BTW.
What BMW claims is that they have to guarantee that the used colors will be available for repairs for some time. I doubt that this would be a problem, though, since color codes are shared between manufacturers anyway (whatever each carmaker calls his ones) - and if one single car of that color exists, BMW would have to keep a reserve anyway.
My guess is that the profit argument is what counts most: When you can sell a ridiculously high priced car to some people (much more expensive than the cited E36 or E46), why then not offer some high-priced options to make it stand out some more from the crowd?
