Hi,
As many of you would know, finding a manual E61 in North America is a challenging task, since these are quite rare.

I was in the same category as I was searching for a Canadian manual LCI E61 and it took me 3 years to finally find the one I was looking for, and there's a reason why.

In total, there were 9,885 E61's brought to North America ('06-'10).
If you think this number is huge, there were 9,429 E60 M5 sold in North America, so your chances of finding a E61 wagon are almost equal to those of a E60 M5.

However, if you are interested in a manual E61, your chances of finding one decrease dramatically as there were only 663 manual E61s brought to NA.
As per our comparison, there were twice as many manual E60 M5's (1,364)

If you're really picky and want a manual LCI E61, there are only 328.
Manual LCI E61 M-sport = 45 cars
Titanium Silver Manual LCI E61 M-sport = 3

So yes, this is what unobtanium looks like!

 

To provide another perspective, there are almost 5 times more E36/8 BMW M Coupes (aka "clownshoes") than manual E61's.



... and 3 times more E86 BMW M Coupes, which most people don't even know existed.


(this is my preferred color - Dark Sepang Bronze)

 

That's why they're called unicorns.

 

So for my search, it was even tougher, as I wanted a Canadian LCI E61 = 1 of 32.
My preference was for a non-monochrome color (no white, grey, silver, black), so I had to find 1 of 10 (Monaco Blue - 6, Deep Sea Blue - 4).

As weird as it may seem, I have found 1 Monaco Blue about 6 months ago, although it had previously been touched. (about $23k worth)

Either way, I was still interested. I had planned to go see it during the weekend, but I got a call from the dealer saying that it had been sold 1 day after being posted.

I was about to give up when finally the Unicorn found it's way online and I ended up buying it!

It's CW98133, with 102k km (63k miles)
1 of 6 - E61 LCI Manual Canadian in Monaco Blue
1 of 3 - E61 LCI Manual Canadian in Monaco Blue with Natural brown Dakota leather
1 of 1 - E61 LCI Manual Canadian in Monaco Blue with Premium Sound

 

Indeed, they are!

 

Anyway, since I did quite a bit of searching and put a list together, if smn is interested in a specific E61 LCI manual statistics, PM me.

In the meantime, here's some interesting info for you:
- There were only 4 Neptune Blue (A85), rarest stock color

- There's one in Barbera Red (A39),

- There was a special ordered one in Crimson Red (A61),

- There are 13 that have Nasca leather with the Ventilated seats,
- There are only 3 with LCCC interior (Cream Beige seats, Black carpets)

 

Wait, there's an actual red E61 in North America?

They came with ventilated seats?!?!!

The fact in the past 2 months I've seen 6 manual E61's for sale surprises me a bit.

 

And I'm curious, where do you find these stats?

For example, I just bought a used 2014 X3 a couple of months ago, and was desperately looking for one with the dynamic handling package, but could not find one for the life of me. I'd be curious how many were optioned that way from the factory. I've heard almost no dealer did so for some reason.

 

Very cool info. I'm with Lotus99, where did you find this information?

 

With some tough negotiating with a Russian website and a few "offers they couldn't refuse", I was "offered" a DB for all manual E61 LCI. They also said something about my mother bla bla bla stop spamming us, etc. but I pretended I didn't understand.

So yes, ventilated seats were dealer ordered, which is why there are only 13 out of the 328 cars.

And yes, there are 2 ultimate wagon unicorns in Red (Barbera and Crimson). From what I gathered, Barbera was a somewhat special color, but it wasn't as difficult to get, while the Crimson is actually a "BMW Individual" order and the owner has paid substantial $$ to get it.

Also, the color of the car is shown as "SONDERLACKIERUNG (490)".