There’s something fun about going a bit wild when spec’ing a car. It tells the world that these are the colors and shades you love, that resale value isn’t top-of-mind, and that you’re a bit too discerning to simply buy off the lot. More importantly, it means you get to walk out in the morning to a car you really love that little bit extra, and who would I be to disagree with that? On the more outlandish side of things, murmurs of a shockingly white interior for the BMW M3 has been going around, but I’m afraid there’s some bad news if you’re enthused by such a proposition.
First, just take a look at this screenshot from BMW’s own configurator, because it’s wild. Just about everything inside this M3 is a blinding shade of printer paper white. The seats, the steering wheel, the bezels around the window switches, the sun visors, it’s like Tony Montana specced it out with no concern for usability or required upkeep.
While this might look striking, light-hued dashboards can cast horrible reflections in the windshield, causing a proper safety issue in the sun. Also, anyone with kids or dark jeans can picture this interior being immediately ruined from the first moment of human contact. Clothing dye transfer, spilled coffee, the sort of bodily fluids parents of young children encounter from time to time, all of this could conspire to turn a white interior grey.
However, before you go sharing this with your friends, there’s something you need to know. Despite what Reddit and some other outlets have reported, this upholstery choice is not real. Not just in the sense that nobody’s bought an M3 with a bright white interior, in the sense that BMW isn’t offering it on the normal options list.
Unique All White Interior BMW M3 Edition 50 Jahre BMW M.
byu/Ajr0116 inBMW
See, the myth of the white M3 interior has propagated far and wide. This Reddit post from three years ago shows a rendering of this cockpit with the title “Unique All White Interior BMW M3 Edition 50 Jahre BMW M.” However, the M3 Edition 50 Jahre BMW M actually came with black leather accented by M stripes, about as far from a snow-white interior as you can get. However, the rumor of the “Miami Vice”-tier interior is making a comeback. Earlier this week, CarScoops reported that “South Africa Gets The Whitest BMW M3 Interior We’ve Ever Seen”. As the outlet wrote:
A recent post made to the BMW page on Reddit reveals that in South Africa, the M3 Touring is available with all-white leather upholstery as a no-cost option. The performance estate is available in other markets with seats clad in white leather, but this is the first time we’ve seen an option that includes this much white leather.
However, if we go to the M3 Touring configurator on the BMW South Africa website, we see that the all-white virtual sample is simply called “Individual Special Leather Upholstery.” What you see here isn’t what you’d receive, because the all-white rendering is actually a placeholder. Clicking this box results in a pop-up appearing explaining that you’re actually selecting Tartufo, a rich truffle brown that in this case, comes as Merino leather from BMW’s Individual division.
I’m sure that if you want and have extremely deep pockets, BMW Individual might upholster your new M3 in leather that makes an iceberg look grey, but for now, the blindingly white BMW M3 interior is not real. It cannot hurt you.
Top graphic image: BMW
Support our mission of championing car culture by becoming an Official Autopian Member.
Stormtrooper Edition
Even if the entire interior was magically treated to stay white over time no matter what, I think it’s horrid.
“South Africa Gets The Whitest BMW M3 Interior We’ve Ever Seen”
Now I know what the next Cybertruck is going to have.
More seriously, if the exterior were also white, imagine driving it in a snowstorm.
Will they call it ‘Apartheid Alabaster?’
My son’s first Model Y had the white interior. He has two young children. Not the best combination.
That wouldn’t last long with me. There is a reason I wear brown.
I have very few white shirts. Even fewer white shirts without at least a coffee stain.
I really hope they are they were referring to coffee.
Umm. I just realized I walked into that one.
Ironic, since your work uniform is white
and here I thought the BMW from earlier was a lot of white
https://www.theautopian.com/the-2026-bmw-ix3-is-here-to-save-bmw-with-big-range-at-an-affordable-price/
WOW that is awesome! BMW should just offer that all-white interior and stop whining and dragging their feet.
I had a white cloth interior in my 13 Dart. AWFUL. Impossible to keep clean. Dropped an M&M on the seat and it forever looked like one shat themselves.
The sacrifices we must make for art….
But it IS possible to keep an all white interior white.
My sister got a cheap used Opel Station wagon with a white interior once. She attacked it with something insane like 6 gallons of bleach. She coated everything white inside with pure bleach for hours.
Then, My sister being my sister, she also used 2 spray bottles of Windex to clean up the shiny bits and did an impromptu re-enactment of Ypers.
Anyway, the car did stay white for a long time inside with all that pure bleach everywhere. But it still wasn’t good. The car had no AC (which wasn’t a real problem because you would have been stupid to roll of the windows without a gas mask). My sister would drive around on a hot day and bleach the bottom of her jeans from getting them wet with butt-sweat.
But the inside was stark white for as long as I remember her owning that car.
I enjoyed your post immensely Hoser, so thank you. 🙂
Plenty of very cool Mopars came with white interiors around 1970. It really popped against those high-impact paint colors like Plum Crazy or Limelight.
A White interior with a Plum Crazy exterior is stunning at a car show.
However.
When I was a kid (mid-70s), we didn’t go to church or out to eat without using an entire can of Aquanet. PER person. I remember being about 5 years old and having a hair helmet that was stronger than my big-brother’s highschool football helmet.
If we had a white interior (which was still common), the head-rests (or in my little self’s case the back of the seat) would have been nasty looking after one trip.
Dye transfer from clothing never seemed to affect old-school vinyl upholstery. Nothing, nothing at all, did.
Oh yeah, my dad’s new ’71 Roadrunner was burgundy/magenta and a white interior. He never let me go on the fact that I threw up in it around age 4. Who has a white interior with a toddler? That’s on him.
Looks like it’s ready for a music video. Do they still play those on MTV?
More importantly, is there still something called MTV?
They don’t offer white because they can’t even keep it clean in the _factory_
I was talking to a company about warehouse space.
Their big concern was if I might be storing something like coal.
They store and move millions of dollars of raw cotton.
The 500e was available with a white and orange interior.
As a grey alien, my real eyes are much larger than a humans. All this additional light reflecting off of gosh darn near everything is giving me something similar to what humans call a “migraine”.
Stop it. I mean you no harm. Seriously.
But it reminded me of my mom’s mid 70s Pontiac Grand Prix leather seats.
It’s not quite as extreme—carpets and dash cap are dark gray—but BMW did once go nearly full-cocaine with the all-white-leather, no-wood interior of the 1986 L7, the swan song for the first, E23-gen 7-series.
The people yearn for non-black interiors.
YES.
Growing up, my dad had a car with a Gold interior and a truck with a blue one. Both were neat.
The thing about black interiors is that they aren’t much better at looking clean than a pure white one. When I get a rental with a black interior, it looks dusty as hell inside almost instantly. Every single speck of dust shows up so easily.
My car is an old thing with Taupe Cloth, back when people bitched about being beige. It doesn’t look dusty inside, because the dust is a similar color as the interior. The seat has a pattern of small dots that are slightly darker beige (tan?), some almost boardline brown. I honestly don’t know how much of this pattern is from the factory and how much is from 20+ years of use. I just know that after a quick vacuum, it looks like it might have left the factory that way.
Oh, and I can sit in it with shorts on and not end up losing skin on a hot day, unlike the S&M Black Leather I seem to keep getting for Rentals in Florida.
Yes, but not….all white.
I distinctly remember my Dad owning a green Pontiac coupe with a white vinyl interior in the 70s. Although I do not recall what became of the car, it did leave a rather negative impression on me.
The fun thing about colors and resale value, at least for exterior colors. Is that resale values are often used as a justification to get a grey, black, white, or a similarly inoffensive color, but the data shows that for most vehicles it is the colors that are more sought after and command higher resale values. All of this to say if you pick a bland color for “resale value” it’s more likely that you are just a bland person devoid of whimsy.
Get what you like and like what you get. I drive a white car with a beige interior in the Deep South. The combination of a great deal on a used car and the colors that do work where I live sold it for me.
If the car had been triple black, I might not have bought it since I know I have to park in a giant parking lot regularly with no shade.
If I had been spending more money, I would have rather some other more interesting color.
But as it is, I like the white/light beige for what I use it for.
Oh my eyes! This needs some Night Panel mode treatment
I had Night Panel turned on. I’m now seeing little white steering wheels everywhere.
“…the blindingly white BMW M3 interior is not real. It cannot hurt you.”
Good, otherwise that would be Virtual Insanity.