The Phoenix: My Build Journal Excerpts

[WestBankM4]

This photo captures what I'm talking about although it's in artificial lighting. Do not mind how filthy the car is, the M3 has been eating up all my free time recently.



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[Nate047]

Phoenix doesn't look so great in poor lighting, but that's also true of some other E46 era colors, notably LSB. If you have talent with a lens (I know you do Nate, but anyone ese), you can easily show off how pretty PY can be.

Thanks my thing is the paint should look good all the time, not just situationally. But yea PY can look good

[Maxima SE]

Just because its rare doesn't make bile yellow a nice color lol.

San Marino is a great color. This thing's gonna be properly sick.

San Marino is a great color. But it works well with the M4 with aggressive body lines. I can almost guarantee you it won't work as nicely on an E46. Softer colors work with the body lines of the E46 much better.

At the end of the day blue is blue and it will not have the presence of a yellow car.

Bile yellow? sure maybe on a cloudy day. On a nice sunny day its a different story. Not that we really care what anyone thinks anyways.

[old///MFanatic]

my thing is the paint should look good all the time, not just situationally.

Exactly 👍🏻
If you have to talk everyone (including yourself) into not disliking the color..it’s not a good color.

[Nate047]

Not that we really care what anyone thinks anyways.

As long as you like your own car that's all that really matters

[Epoustouflant]

I've been stopped on the road a couple of times, the last time it was a father and his son. They had made a bet on the color of my CS, the father said it's purple and the kid said it was blue, I told them it's San Marino Blue. I don't blame them either because there are times when the sun is going down, there's still ambient light but the car looks purple, there's no mistaking it.

Great color choice man, I'm excited to see what it looks like!

WestBankM4, I have had your car in mind forever.

Would you look at that!

San Marino is a great color. But it works well with the M4 with aggressive body lines. I can almost guarantee you it won't work as nicely on an E46. Softer colors work with the body lines of the E46 much better.

At the end of the day blue is blue and it will not have the presence of a yellow car.

Bile yellow? sure maybe on a cloudy day. On a nice sunny day its a different story. Not that we really care what anyone thinks anyways.

Hard disagree.

Any pearlescent colors will look best on rounded shapes to showcase the pearlescents gradient shifts. The "harder" lines of the M4 cut through the gradients - and if the picture above shows anything, it's that the M4 really wasn't all that harsher in its design.

It's a beautiful car.

One of these is not an E46 generation color.

Exactly 👍🏻
If you have to talk everyone (including yourself) into not disliking the color..it’s not a good color.

This has been one of my issue with PY since day 1. It's just not all that.

When the estimate rolled out around, you do a bit of research and figure out the market thinks like us as well.

I've discussed the numbers here.

[...] and it isn't that rare

The purists will say I'm botching away a rare PY.

I disagree that it's rare.

Even though it was a launch color, it was available throughout the entire generation.

Let's look at the numbers:
Out of 84,383 E46 M3s that were produced, 3723 were painted in Phoenix Yellow.


[...] nor valued that much.

The purists will say I'm mauling away the value.

I disagree that it's valuable.

Let's look at the numbers:
There isn't a single PY E46 M3 in the Top 25 of highest bids recorded on Bring a Trailer.

I was expecting NAM3 to be on the purist side. All in all I'm surprised by the positive reactions - thanks gents.

[Maxima SE]

3723 out of 84k cars translates to 4% of the global production which is rare. Fast forward 20+ years later, there are way fewer cars on the road now. I live in LA where M3s are on every corner and I have yet to see another PY. But I see other colors all the time and LSB once in a while.

Nate said paint should look good all the time. Well paint looks best on a sunny day. Not at night or on a cloudy rainy day.

PY will never rank in top 25 highest bids. Yellow isn't for everyone so it is a risky investment from a collectors standpoint. Then you have lack of ZCP and rarity of late model cars where PY greatly suffers. Other colors with these specs do very well on bat. Good luck finding an 04-06 PY. You're basically left with a bunch of beat left over 01-02 high mileage cars which perform slightly worse than their poor performing LSB counterpart.

[Epoustouflant]

3723 out of 84k cars translates to 4% of the global production which is rare. Fast forward 20+ years later, there are way fewer cars on the road now. I live in LA where M3s are on every corner and I have yet to see another PY. But I see other colors all the time and LSB once in a while.

Nate said paint should look good all the time. Well paint looks best on a sunny day. Not at night or on a cloudy rainy day.

PY will never rank in top 25 highest bids. Yellow isn't for everyone so it is a risky investment from a collectors standpoint. Then you have lack of ZCP and rarity of late model cars where PY greatly suffers. Other colors with these specs do very well on bat. Good luck finding an 04-06 PY. You're basically left with a bunch of beat left over 01-02 high mileage cars which perform slightly worse than their poor performing LSB counterpart.

This is rare and scarce; we’re talking below 0.5% production *if* you include the Euro GTS. They’re also the highest valued E92s.

PY just isn’t.

[WestBankM4]

The Lime Rock Edition is so good on the E92. I'd imagine the purists would step up if you were to even think about painting this one.

[Epoustouflant]

The Lime Rock Edition is so good on the E92. I'd imagine the purists would step up if you were to even think about painting this one.

Deservingly so ahah. It was hard enough having to restore the front end on this one - glad to say it looks better than OEM and I got it sealed in PPF.

[Gt4]

The Lime Rock Edition is so good on the E92. I'd imagine the purists would step up if you were to even think about painting this one.

But Fire Orange and Lime Rock Edition aren’t the same??

[Gt4]

3723 out of 84k cars translates to 4% of the global production which is rare. Fast forward 20+ years later, there are way fewer cars on the road now. I live in LA where M3s are on every corner and I have yet to see another PY. But I see other colors all the time and LSB once in a while.

Nate said paint should look good all the time. Well paint looks best on a sunny day. Not at night or on a cloudy rainy day.

PY will never rank in top 25 highest bids. Yellow isn't for everyone so it is a risky investment from a collectors standpoint. Then you have lack of ZCP and rarity of late model cars where PY greatly suffers. Other colors with these specs do very well on bat. Good luck finding an 04-06 PY. You're basically left with a bunch of beat left over 01-02 high mileage cars which perform slightly worse than their poor performing LSB counterpart.

Your PY is as rare as Steel grey with 3851 unit and Alpine White with 4171 unit worldwide.

And you are lucky to see LSB with 2495 unit worldwide, which is 1228 less than PY

But when I look at production number, I only consider NA unit & LHD cause an E46 M3 isn’t rare enough to import one from ROW or/and RHD… And I only look for Coupe (and 6mt).

[Nate047]

I live in LA where M3s are on every corner and I have yet to see another PY. But I see other colors all the time and LSB once in a while.

Nate said paint should look good all the time. Well paint looks best on a sunny day. Not at night or on a cloudy rainy day.

I hardly ever see e46 M3s on the west side, when I do they are usually silver or black verts lol. Regardless it's not like I hate PY or think it's the worst color out there, I just don't love it. I also don't really like LSB so the community can go ahead and dock my points further.

[WestBankM4]

But Fire Orange and Lime Rock Edition aren’t the same??

I thought they released the Lime Rock Edition E92 in Fire Orange only? Well it's the first time Fire Orange was introduced I guess.

[Tbonem3]

Lime rock ed is fire orange, but you can still have a regular e9x in fire orange.

I've never seen an E90 one! (only 5 made he says)

https://www.m3post.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1003717