BMW M3 Limited Edition 500 - price from £55,690

The BMW M3 Limited Edition 500 is the last hurrah for the current M3 in the UK

To coincide with today’s launch of the ’12’ plates, the BMW M3 Limited Edition 500 has been revealed as coupe or convertible. Costs from £55,690.

The BMW M3 Limited Edition 500 has been announced by BMW today, a cosmetic job on the current M3 and available as a coupe or convertible. And it looks like the last hurrah for the current V8 M3 in the UK.

You don’t need to be a genius to work out there will be just 500 M3 500s up for grabs, and you can have an M3 500 Coupe or M3 500 Convertible with a six speed manual or seven-speed DCT.

BMW is offering a limited red, white and blue colour palette for the M3 500 – in BMW-speak that’s Imola Red, Mineral White or Santorini Blue – and you’ll get BMW’s high-gloss Shadowline trim and 19″ high-gloss black alloys.

Inside there’s extended Novillo leather with contrast stitching to compliment the choice of exterior colour, piano black trim and a little engraving to say your M3 500 is ‘One of 500’. BMW say that the extra goodies on the M3 500 would cost you £4k if you specced a regular M3 up the same way, but the M3 500 Coupe and Convertible are just £1k more than the regular M3.

That means the BMW M3 500 Coupe will cost you £55,690 and the convertible £59,785. It also means there’s precious little chance of anyone ordering a regular M3, so the last 500 M3s in the UK are likely to be the Limited Edition 500.

Because this Limited Edition M3 is almost certainly a farewell to the V8-engined M3.