Since human beings have long been fascinated with
the night sky, BMW decided to build a bespoke M850i model, honoring the
incoming meteor shower expected to take place overnight, from January 3rd
through to the 4th.
We will owe the light show to asteroid 2003 EH,
whose fragments will enter our planet’s atmosphere and burn up. When that
happens, some smaller rocks will actually fall to Earth as meteorites, striking
the ground.
It’s fragments like those that have been incorporated
into the cabin of the bespoke BMW Individual M850i Night Sky, which is what
allowed BMW designers to state that this car features materials that are
literally out of this world.
Inside the special version of the M850i, you’ll find
meteoric rock adorning the center console’s trim plate, the start/stop button,
selector lever and the touch controller for the iDrive system. Furthermore, the
same material was used on the door sill finishers. During the design process,
BMW Individual actually relied on the expertise of researchers at the Max
Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics.
This M850i includes multiple interior and exterior
elements built to resemble a structure found only on extra-terrestrial objects,
specifically the Widmanstätten surface pattern found on meteorites. It is a
geometric structure, boasting straight lines and the appearance of ice
crystals. In order to form, this structure needs to go through the process of
cooling down in an extremely slow way, one that cannot be reproduced on Earth.
Inside the car, you can find it on the hand-stitched
headliner and on the center console’s trim finishers. It’s also present on the
outside, milled into the brake discs, around the mirror caps, front splitters
for the side air intakes, center mesh plates and the surrounds for the Air
Breathers on the front side panels.
The BMW Individual M850i Night Sky is more than just
an “event car”. It actually features BMW Motorsport-developed brake calipers,
which are up to 30% lighter than conventional components thanks to the process
of 3D printing.
As for further luxury amenities, there’s the BMW
Individual fine-grain Merino leather trim with its tri-color design, the Opal
White / Midnight Blue / Silver color scheme and Midnight Blue deep-pile
carpeting.
The exterior color of the car combines two tones for
a high-impact effect. The base color used on the body was a black non-metallic,
joined by a San Marino Blue metallic coat, painted over it in a graduated
effect. Last but not least, three layers of clear coat with varying pigment
particle sizes were applied, leading to an impressive sense of depth.
