iND 15 Year Anniversary Build: G82 M4
Everything starts with an idea.
The idea behind IND began fifteen years ago when three young automotive enthusiasts cleaned out a dusty storage office in the corner of a body shop with one simple goal:
become the definitive source for the highest quality components. Quickly that simple goal presented complex problems; office hours from seven A.M. to midnight became our new normal, but the underlying passion kept propelling IND forward and with it, garnered fast attention within the industry that we so desperately wanted to change.
THE OLD OFFICE:
It is perhaps those early trials by fire that helped prepare us for what we’ve become today and who we are destined to become in the future. But despite every evolutionary step we take forward, we continuously come back to examine the core of what made IND a success story fifteen years before.
Are we putting our customers and our dealers first? How do we make sure we stay true to IND’s core values that have helped us build this unique business? Largely, this lasting commitment to our core values has made IND special in a crowded arena. We have, and will continue, to put people first.
But speaking of people, it’d be a disservice to not talk about the people behind IND today. Most of our passionate staff have been friends for nearly
two decades—all the way from negotiating the task of operating a car for the first time, discovering our love for the BMW brand, to honing our unique definitions of automotive style and performance. Tangent to our core values, this long-standing trust and faith in our crew has propelled IND to new heights. Indeed, this sense of family extends to our proud partnerships—our carefully curated “family of brands” is something we are deeply proud to tout and we couldn’t be more excited to work together with them on our latest project.
The G82 M4
There’s a lot that can be said about the new G8X, but which generation of M has gone without criticism? The E30 was a buzzy inline-four that was slower than the equivalent 325i where it mattered to most. The E36 wasn’t a “real” M in the United States. The E46 sounded like a can of bees. A V8 in an M3? Wait, what’s an
M4? BMW fans are scrutinizing, but it’s criticism that often fades away behind the wheel. Certainly, that sentiment has given BMW as a brand one of the longest lasting mantras in the industry: the
Ultimate Driving Machine.
Faithful to BMW’s credo, we optioned our new G82 M4 project in a classic hue (Alpine White) and with the enthusiast’s greatest accessory: the 6-speed manual gearbox. In sharp contrast to the blank canvas outside, the Kyalami carbon buckets provided the boldness that echoed throughout BMW’s radical design exercise. Once the car arrived at Knauz BMW, we got to work. IND’s suite of cosmetic enhancements were the first components on our M4, followed by some of Future Classic’s most popular mods: their 5x112 wheel spacers and titanium studs.
Indeed, our admiration for BMW’s creation was short-lived—the car morphed from an object of affection to a tool that we used to test and curate components for our eager fans. Early access to KW’s height adjustable spring kit helped lower the M4 onto its haunches; it provided us (and the community) the very first taste of what the aftermarket suspension world would do to sharpen the G8X. The visual effect of KW’s improvement was multiplied with the few BMW M Performance parts that started to become available.
Soon after, we left the car in the trusting hands of Fall-Line Motorsports so they could start development on an expansive array of upgrades. It was at this stage that we got news that SEMA would be moving forward this year. Last year’s absence has us all guessing as to whether the industry’s most notorious trade show would be back, but the announcement triggered a flurry of movement within IND’s walls. We knew that,
especially because of the year lapse, we had to do something big.
BRG
In our previous portfolio builds, we looked outward to Porsche’s catalog of hues, but after all our chatter about BMW’s history, the decision to pay homage to its own library was an easy one. Over a matter of a few days, the car was disassembled and prepped for what was going to be a remarkable transformation. While our Gelbgrün M2 was made to make maximum visual impact as a new BMW platform, we knew that whatever color we chose for the M4 would also have to reflect the G8X’s evolution into a more mature, yet perfectly capable sporting machine. There was only one color that fit that bill: British Racing Green from the European E36 M3 GT, or perhaps for the more nuanced BMW fan, the AC Schnitzer CLS II.
As luck would have it, the color code to BRG is “312”—one of Chicago’s more notorious area codes and fitting nod to where IND began fifteen years before.
