BMW M3 pickup is an April Fool's gift

We've gotten right to the core of the situation regarding the fly-in-the-ointment BMW M3 pickup spotted doing what M3s do around the Nürburgring last week.

In a chat with BMW's Munich head of product communications, Dirk Arnold, he offered up this quote: "Ah, yes, everyone's been talking about that pickup. But, no, this is... how you call it, an April Fool's Joke" [in German "Aprilscherz" - ed.]. There will be no M3 pickup in our futures, kids. But then Arnold sort of over communicated to us by dangling one of those "...in this generation" qualifiers. He then also managed to immediately clarify, "It is hugely doubtful that BMW will ever during our lives produce such a vehicle, in any segment."

What about a publicity stunt entering the one-off in the Australian V8 Ute racing series? "Well," chortled Arnold, "we have the one unit available if they'd be interested, don't we?"

On April 1, a press function has been organized near Munich to show off the future M5 "concept," plus the current M3 and a whole series of unproduced M3-based prototypes, including, says Arnold, one folding hardtop variant that is not the one we all think it is. There will also be the mischievous pickup in attendance.

Then he was asked for a drive exclusive in Munich on April 1 with the pickup and Arnold returned our serve with "If I did that, then I'd have every journalist in the world calling me to do the same."

Must be nice to have the largesse to build and race one-off 414-horsepower M3 variants (444-hp with the 4.4-liter V8 used in the GTS version) that will never see public roads.