BMW Used Lamborghini V10 Noise For M2 Marketing Video, Then Deleted It

In what should have been a neat little video to usher in the new year, BMW USA’s official Instagram page depicted an M2 Competition sliding around while the date on its onboard clock changed from 2020 to 2021. The only problem was the noise in the background, which definitely wasn’t a turbocharged inline-six.

The badly dubbed sound was that of a V10, most likely Lamborghini’s 5.2. Later it’s from something else which we can’t quite pin down. And while you might argue the average punter wouldn’t know/care, BMW USA must have been keen to avoid ridicule, as the video has since been deleted. Not before several people saved it for posterity, of course.

What’s particularly interesting about the M2 video is it’s the latest in a number of social media gaffes from BMW. At the tail end of last year it raised eyebrows by retorting, “OK Boomer” to anyone who didn’t like the look of its iX EV, a Tweet it subsequently apologised for. But not before dumping some of the negative reactions in a YouTube video, and using its official Twitter account to tell people how wrong they were and why.

It was a condescending, weirdly hostile approach to marketing. Plus, in a single sentence, BMW managed to alienate its core buyers while looking daft to the younger generations it was trying to appeal to by using a meme well past its sell-by date.

It’s unclear if any of this was the work of BMW’s internal social media staff. Often, a manufacturer’s social media properties are looked after by a handsomely-paid agency. If it’s the latter responsible for the recent faux pas, hopefully BMW will rethink who it works with.