I think there is always going to be some uncertainty in this number. Here's what I know for sure:
740 was the number quoted by the then head of M for BMW North America right after production finished. It's in a bimmerfile audio interview that you can still listen to (The 1M discussion starts around 7:15 and the direct quote is at 9:07):
http://www.bimmerfile.com/2012/01/14...l-interviewed/
This is why 740 is the most commonly referenced number. It came from a reliable source and was re-posted, re-blogged, and re-tweeted enough to take root.
Unfortunately, the VIN database from BMW does not confirm this number. The electronic parts catalog stores VIN ranges by model code and month of production. You can then take those VIN ranges and pull the full specs of each car from the central BMW database (which is what all the online decoders do one way or another). That is how I built the spreadsheet in this thread. I consider the other "Unofficial 1M Registry" to be useless. It has multiple errors in it as I outlined in post #24.
So, if you trust BMW's own database of production data, then these are accurate numbers:
- 983 total cars were built for the US and Canada markets under model code UR93.
- 222 of 983 were built with option L838A - indicating it was a Canadian version of the car.
- The remaining 761 of 983 are US spec cars.
11 of those 761 cars were pre-production models built from 9/2010 - 12/2010. These cars appear to have never been sold in the US because they have no VIN or title histories in databases like NVMTIS. My guess is that they were destroyed.
So that is why I say 750 - it is a verifiable number of production cars built to US specs.
If you are trying to get the number of cars originally sold new to customers, that would be tough to verify but is obviously less than 750. You would probably need someone at BMW to track down which dealer each car was delivered to and who bought it because you can find other interesting anomalies. For example, VT47840 was the last US spec car and it has no VIN or title history. It's not clear where that car is, but it doesn't appear that it was ever sold. If I had to take a wild guess, BMWNA realized the popularity of the car and had one more made. They put it in a warehouse so they could use it for future photoshoots and comparisons with a "spiritual successor" to the 1M. (That car does happen to be VO with manual seats and no Nav).
TL;DR
I say 750, most people believe 740, but you could also argue 761 if you include pre-production, or another unknown total if you only include cars sold new to customers.