All luxury brands have ‘affordable’ models in their ranges. Mercedes-Benz has its A-Class, BMW has its 1 Series and B&W has its 600 Series.
First introduced in 1995 the performance — and looks — of the various models in B&W’s 600 Series have been upgraded quite a few times, but the first significant upgrade, which was so dramatic B&W decided it deserved the addition of a ‘Series 2’ to the original model numbers, was three years ago, in 2018.
But come 2020, B&W realised it was the 25th anniversary of the 600 Series’ introduction, so it decided an ‘Anniversary’ issue was in order. The problem was that B&W’s engineers had already made the Series 2 model pretty much as good as they could. Which means this 603 S2 Anniversary model is a bit like a ‘Director’s Cut’ where the exterior design team got to add a tweak or two, and the engineering team also got to take a second look.
It looks like both teams were pretty happy with what they found, because they didn’t really change all that much. The exterior design team thought an ‘Anniversary Series’ model deserved the finish traditionally reserved for 25 anniversaries (at least in the Western world) so they changed the colour of the trim around the tweeter to silver and added a new wood veneer finish (light oak) to the ones that were already available. And recognising that some world markets would not recognise the significance of using silver, they also decided to engrave the tweeter surround Anniversary’ to really drive the point home to all those who might not have recognised the meaning of the silver livery.
