BMW Individual program sparks animal attraction

Like most luxury car brands, BMW is happy to offer customers with a bit more (or sometimes a lot more) to spend the chance to personalise their cars.

In BMW's case, the program is called BMW Individual and it allows for all sorts of seemingly bizarre decision-making on the part of the customer.

BMW shared a couple of its most, er, imaginative special orders with Drive recently, starting with a customer who wanted to give his parents a BMW 7-Series to mark their 50th wedding anniversary.

The reproduction wedding rings in a special compartment in the centre console were a thoughtful touch, but the roof lining was another matter to most tastes. Since his parents were married in (according to the Chinese zodiac) the year of the monkey, the buyer arranged for the roof lining to have an image of the monkey in question stitched into it.

But our favourite was another 7-Series buyer from somewhere in Scandinavia who had made his not inconsiderable pile catching fish for a living.

To recognise the debt he owed the fish, he requested that the interior areas normally covered by timber veneer be instead covered by salmon skin. One imagines getting the salmon skin (complete with scales) to turn it into a workable leather was one thing. But getting the smell out of it would have been another altogether.

Oh, and good luck to the fisherman in question come trade-in time.

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