Your "bland/slab style" comment is pretty much what I said when I saw the first E92. I described it as "slab sided" to be exact.

I think that is because the one you saw and the first one I saw was Jet Black. It's very plain and actually quite Accordish from the side but when I saw the Space Gray one around the corner, the one I test drove, it looked much better.
I would add that the slab-sidedness of it would be less prominent with a nice set of 19" wheels. I can't wait to see something like that; a Space Gray or Montego Blue with 19" CSL style wheels or HRE/iForged would look sick!