If this rumor is true, I think it's evidence of Canon beginning to make mirrorless the new point-and-shoot market.
As camera phones devour the point-and-shoot market, Canon needs a new consumer-level bread-and-butter line that's good enough to be a clear advantage over camera phones but low enough in feature set to avoid cannibalizing the DSLR market. It wouldn't surprise me if Canon introduced several slightly different flavors of the the consumer-level M. For the consumer market, I doubt any of them have any clue which generation of sensor is in the camera, and they probably don't care. If it's cheap enough and has nifty enough features and is easy to use, the consumer market will be happy.
Obviously, neither the current M nor the M of this rumor represent a serious attempt by Canon to show the world how the ultimate mirrorless body should be done. If/when Canon decides to make such a statement, I'm confident it will be nothing less than spectacular. Meanwhile, we can all speculate on what will motivate Canon to do it...oh, and take some pictures between forum posts.