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A remarkably original example of BMW's mid-engine halo car has quietly surfaced for sale, and its backstory reads unlike any other M1 on the market. Chassis 4301011 is being offered through RM Sotheby's Private Sales at an asking price of €550,000, and it carries a distinction that separates it from virtually every other M1 in existence: it was one of just three cars BMW itself retained for press duty.
Completed in late October 1978 and finished by coachbuilder Baur that December, this M1 landed with BMW's press department in early January 1979, roughly two months before the first customer car ever reached a driveway. Of the trio of press cars, this is the only one finished in Dark Blue Metallic, a color applied to just 59 M1s across the entire production run. A BMW Classic Certificate backs up its press-fleet service, and the car reportedly wore two different period license plates, MAW 3064 and MTT 8459, while making the rounds with journalists and possibly appearing in period brochure photography.
The car's life after BMW is just as tidy. It crossed the Atlantic in 1981, was federalized for American roads, and then sat with a single Californian owner for more than three decades before returning to Germany in 2016. There, a subsequent owner commissioned Dutch marque specialist Oldenzaal Classics to carry out a roughly 450-hour mechanical restoration, touching the engine, transmission, differential, fuel injection pump, and suspension bushings, along with fresh Pirelli tires and interior detailing. The current consignor acquired the car through RM Sotheby's and brought it back across the Atlantic once more before its return to Europe, where it resides today.
Context matters here. The M1 was the first BMW conceived entirely by the company's then-new Motorsport division, styled by Giorgetto Giugiaro and built to homologate the model for Group 4 and Group 5 racing. Delays killed those racing ambitions before they started, so BMW pivoted to the one-make Procar series instead, pairing race-prepped M1s with Formula One drivers on Grand Prix weekends. With only 399 street cars built, the M1 remains one of the rarest cars to ever wear a BMW badge, and it stands as the spiritual ancestor to every M car that followed, a lineage we've traced in our own BMW brand retrospective.
Values for the model have been anything but static. Hagerty's Valuation Tools currently peg a #3 (Good) condition 1979 M1 at roughly $385,000, a figure that has slipped about 13.5% over the past year even as headline results stay strong: Bring a Trailer sold one for $550,000 this past March, RM Sotheby's brought $604,500 for a 1980 example in January, and Mecum saw another 1980 car reach $770,000 that same month. Only about 15 M1s have crossed public auction blocks in the last three years, so pricing swings hard depending on condition, ownership history, and originality, exactly the kind of provenance this press car has in spades. It's the same reason we keep pointing readers toward Hagerty's data whenever a well-documented example, like this recent Hagerty Marketplace Nissan 300ZX, comes up for sale.
Cars with this kind of story, first press car finished in its most historically significant color, single long-term ownership, and a thorough professional restoration, do not come up often. For anyone building a collection of era-defining supercars, an M1 like this belongs on the shortlist alongside the other icons currently listed for sale on Motorious.
