BMW M5 Competition Edition ruled out for Oz

The world’s big, fast, luxury sedans are getting bigger and faster and more luxurious. And BMW is making sure its buyers are not missing out. In Europe at least!

Say hello to the fastest, most powerful M5 ever; the M5 Competition Edition.

Just 200 M5 Competition Edition models will be built for global consumption but the bad news is that BMW Australia has confirmed ultra M5 won't be headed our way.

The car is built on the familiar M5 package of rear-drive, hydraulic steering, biturbo V8 power, a dual-clutch transmission, a trick active differential and almost two tonnes of body mass to lug around. But M has fiddled with the engine management system and raised the turbocharger’s boost pressure to lift the M5 Competition Edition’s power output by 29kW to 441 and crank the torque up by 20Nm to 700.

It still has the same 3.9sec sprint time to 100km/h, limited by the rear-drive layout and the longitudinal limitations of the tyres, and it has the same 9.9 litres/100km figure for the NEDC fuel-economy data.

At 1870kg, the 4910mm long M5 Competition Edition still reaches 250km/h so easily in fifth, sixth and seventh gear, that M gives owners the option of stretching it out to 305km/h.

There’s a problem with all of this so far, though. The data is identical to the M5 Competition Package (M says the new limited-edition model “harmonizes perfectly” with it) and in fact it takes everything the existing model has and throws a few more tricks at it.

Unfortunately, it signals a move to packaging tricks at M (which also showed the similarly limited edition M3 30 Year anniversary model a few weeks ago), and most of those tricks relate to things like wheels, tyres, interior trims and colours.

For example, a neat 100 of the Competition Editions will be made in metallic Carbon Black and the next 100 of them will be painted in metallic Mineral White.

All models will have their forged and polished 20-inch alloy rims painted in black, and the front ones will be wrapped in 265/35 ZR20 rubber, while larger 295/30 ZR20s are at the back. The rest of the exterior package is just detailing from the M parts bin, including a carbon-fibre rear diffuser, bootlid Gurney flap and mirror caps, gloss black kidney grilles and side gills with M5 Competition badges on them.

For a car badged Competition Edition, the interior sports a lot of stuff that adds weight and does not so much at all of anything to enhance its competition credentials. After all, very few racecars I’ve seen have heated seats or 1200-Watt Bang & Olufsen sound systems, much less lane-departure warning systems or full leather trim.

In case people become disoriented by its closeness to an existing M5 model, BMW promises to give it M5 Competition individually numbered logos, easily seen from the powered seats.

All that aside, it’s no bad thing to score most of the ideas stuffed inside the Competition Package, so the Competition Edition has its suspension lowered 10mm over the stock M5, scores a tweaked diff and uprated Dynamic Stability Control.

M is asking €129,500 for the cars in its home market, and that’s without the optional carbon-ceramic anchors and some of the more fun bits and pieces, but it does include all the Competition Package stuff as standard.