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I tried thinking practically about this car once, too. Once. Then a friend of mine slapped me!
Given BMW's lease residual values (posted somewhere else in this forum), I think they're assuming the value will drop. Now...I can't say why that's the case. It could be that they expect lots of people to track the living daylights out of their leased cars and rack up lots of hard miles. Or, it could be that they know they are releasing this car at the end of the 1 series' life cycle (which is admittedly strange), and are protecting their dealers (who will have the replacement series in less than 24 months) against taking back a bunch of lease cars that are upside-down in value.
However, there is always the enthusiast factor, which no smart business would reasonably budget for (although they probably always hope for it in their best-case-scenario projections). This car seems to have a high enthusiast factor, and no shortage of enthusiasts. That factor alone could outweigh the other two I just described...and keep the value high.
Keep in mind, too, that in 12 months there will probably be very few used 1Ms out there, and certainly not enough to match the number of folks who are disappointed that they weren't able to get one.
Just my 2 cents.
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