Two Coupé Sightings Within an Hour on Public Roads

[ZweierCoupe]

It's not a big deal any longer now that the official photos have been out for nearly two weeks and have found their way to the magazines and news web sites, but this afternoon during the rush hour traffic period I did see two of the new BMW coupés within less than an hour in the northwestern wart of Munich, not too far from the MAN truck factory.

Since I was driving, I couldn't really turn my head and get a close look. Even though they were going in the opposite direction, they were both distinctive from their shape and thus immediately recognizable, indeed quite small. I suspect they were the diesel versions since they didn't appear to have that aggresive stance of the 135i. One was entirely undisguised (except possibly the propeller badges, since it's standard practice to leave those off), in a bright blue color that really didn't appeal to me, the other one was silver, with a long black stripe of plastic covering up the side edge below the windows. The silver one did a quick turn and handled rather nicely.

It probably shouldn't be too hard to sight these cars in the area around BMW's engineering center (FIZ), but I haven't driven around there lately. I heard that the Leipzig factory is so flexible that they're already producing a few of the coupés there sporadically. I'm sure these pre-production models won't be standing around much but will be driven out on the roads.