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BMW M4 CSL Production Ends at 1,036 Cars
Independent VIN-level data shows BMW built 36 more M4 CSLs than the announced 1,000-unit limit, with Frozen Brooklyn Grey dominating the run and a single Frozen Tampa Bay Green car standing out as the rarest example.
By Eleanor Ellington · 3 min read
BMW's G82 M4 CSL ended production with 1,036 cars built, according to VIN-level data compiled by MDataWorks, an independent tracker with no connection to the manufacturer. The figure exceeds by 36 the 1,000-unit limit BMW announced when the track-focused model debuted, making the final run slightly larger than the official cap suggested.
The production split by colour is heavily skewed towards the launch shade. Frozen Brooklyn Grey accounts for 658 cars, or 63.5 per cent of the total, a dominance that reflects the matte grey finish used in almost all of the model's press photography. Black Sapphire follows with 251 cars, or 24.2 per cent, while Alpine White 3 is the rarest of the three regular colours at 126 cars, or 12.2 per cent. That makes a white CSL roughly twice as hard to find as a black one.
Then there is the outlier: a single M4 CSL finished in Frozen Tampa Bay Green. MDataWorks lists exactly one car in that colour out of the full 1,036, making it the rarest CSL by a considerable margin. Nothing is known about where it was delivered, who ordered it, or how the order was approved for a car with such a tightly controlled specification. It is likely to have gone either to a particularly favoured customer of the M brand or to a company executive. No photograph of the car has surfaced.
The United States was the largest single market, taking 266 cars, or about a quarter of the run. Germany followed with 201, and the United Kingdom was a distant third with 98. Switzerland took 64, Canada 43, Australia 32 and Japan 25. Switzerland's total stands out: a country of roughly nine million people absorbed more CSLs than Canada and twice as many as Australia, continuing a long-standing Swiss appetite for fast cars in disproportionate numbers.
Those seven markets together account for 729 cars. The remaining 307 were spread across dozens of other countries, with the VIN list showing deliveries to France, Italy, Belgium and Türkiye. At least one Black Sapphire car went to Réunion, the French island in the Indian Ocean — an unlikely home for a track-focused, two-seat M4.
By drivetrain layout, 533 cars went to left-hand-drive markets outside North America. North America took 309, exactly the combined US and Canadian totals. The remaining 194 were right-hand drive, with the UK alone accounting for just over half of those and Australia and Japan making up most of the rest.
The geographic split closely mirrors that of the M4 CSL's sister models. The G80 M3 CS and G82 M4 CS each sent roughly 30 per cent of production to North America, and the CSL landed at almost exactly that level. For collectors, the data confirms what the colour charts already implied: the Frozen Brooklyn Grey cars will be the most common sight, while the lone Frozen Tampa Bay Green example is effectively a one-off within a limited run that was itself never quite as limited as advertised.
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