If you know the right people and have enough bank, you can waltz into your local BMW dealer and order a car painted in a matte silver called frozen grey metallic. Welcome to BMW Individual, Munich's custom-trim and personalization arm.
Got five grand burning a hole in your pocket? If you're the enterprising/conniving/begging type, you might be able to convince BMW of North America to sell you a car painted in an appealingly shine-free shade of silver.
Costs and availability vary, but for around $5000, U.S. customers can gain access to a seemingly endless palette of color choices, including the semi-gloss frozen gray seen here. As far as we know, this is the only way to get a factory-sprayed, matte-finished production sedan in America.
Naturally, there's a catch: Individual paint is only available by special order, and many dealers are either ignorant of the process or refuse to admit that it exists. Ordering an Individual color often adds several months to the build and delivery rigamarole. Lastly, only a small number of American Individual requests are granted each year, and there's often no rhyme or reason to the veto process. As my grandmother used to say, if you gets it, you gets it; if you don't, you don't.
Still, this is pretty dang cool. The M5 in the attached gallery is owned by a moderator at M5board.com; he recently took delivery and claims that his car is one of the last E60 M5s to be produced. Shiny paint? How much more yesterday can you get?
[M5board]