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I’ll share my two cents.
It seems to me that BMW ITSELF feels the car is worthy of the M badge by placing the M badge everywhere inside and outside on the M X1 already.
You and your guests see it when you first walk up to the car (M on the wheels), when you first open the door (M on the sill), when you look at the shifter, when you look at the instrument cluster, etc, etc. It is everywhere on the inside AND outside of the car. So your guests already see the M badge – from BMW – while walking up to the door. It is all true BMW M equipment.
If an owner paid BMW the sizable amount extra to get the upgrade to all true BMW M equipment on his/her car – with the goal to make it as fully M as the M X1 can be ordered as, then I don’t see any problem for someone wanting to take the same BMW M logo that BMW put on the inside of their car, on the outside to make it match.
IE - Since they ordered and paid for the M X1… I see no problem if they want the badge on the outside to match the badging on the inside.
This is NOT someone taking a stock X1 and slapping a M5 badge on it. Rather it is someone making the badging on the exterior of their M X1 match the badging of the interior of their M X1.
OP - Don’t let some of the arrogance surrounding the M badge turn you away from making your M X1 car look as you want, and/or as unified as you want it to look.
These people can take it up with BMW for M badging the entire car with M except for on the hatch. To many, you are simply making your car look unified.
Last month I did my M X1 ED. My interaction with the two M5 ED folks (from one of the BMW forums but I didn’t get which one) on my same delivery day left a sour taste in my mouth. I had wanted to say hi to fellow forum ED members, but they dismissed the entire rest of the group and only interacted with each other - all day - as “M people”. They further acted like complete American yahoo’s rev’ing their engines in neutral to red line during their first moments delivery inside BMW Welt to ‘show off” by making big Harly noises. No other European would act in this uncouth and “not smart for a new engine” way. My family lives in Munich and originally I thought I’d help them out or offer pointers – but their arrogance made me keep my distance.
Later in the ED trip, in my “M-equipped X1”, I beat and passed a likewise-new ED M5 that I caught up to on the Stelvio Pass, as we both were passing other cars together. He and I later spoke together while waiting for a blocked construction vehicle to clear the road near the start. He challenged me up the hill in front of his three friends in the car (he having pole position). He had such M5 arrogance while looking down his nose at my own new ED car. My AWD M-equipped car out performed his where it really mattered most - on a most challenging road. As we raced each other up the hairpins, his back-end kept sliding out and lightening up in all the corners (similar to over-powered American Mustangs), until I finally passed him on one of the corners. That felt amazing! On Stelvio! Whereas my car, I felt, hunkered down on every corner and stuck to the road like glue. I was extremely impressed with my car’s handling. Same for passing ‘better’ cars on the Autobahn at 130+ mph. Again – where and when it mattered most – and more of challenge than it would ever see here in the US – this M-equipped car drove as a high performance German car should. YMMV.
To me it is not simply “ALL” about what badge you have outside your hatch as some the M arrogance suggests, but what kind of person are and what kind skilled driver you are. Perhaps I’m projecting that M attitude experienced from there to here, where it is coloring my reading of this discussion here.
Beyond that, the incoherent “half and half” M X1 badging concept simply does not feel right, looks incomplete, and gives off conflicting energy to me in almost a Zen-violating way. Either add it all the way or take it all off.
My car is still in transit after ED. I have not decided what I will do with it myself yet – whether leave it alone, or de-badge it like I saw many in Europe, or make the outside badging match the inside badging.
However, by competitively passing the M5 up Stelvio, I feel my car has earned “its stripes” - if I decide to go that route. Or I may take the M logos off the interior entirely if I feel they look too incoherent or too flashy. I need more time in and with my car to tell.
So OP - If you like the way your M X1 looks with the same M badge on the outside as BMW put everywhere on the inside, and/or you feel it unifies your M exterior to your M interior… then go for it!
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