• The BMW Car Club of America (BMW CCA) is the largest single-marque car club in the world, affording its members special access to events, discounts, driving schools, and much more to celebrate all things BMW.
• BMW CCA has partnered with Turn 14 Distribution over the last five years to create a no-holds-barred grand prize car for its annual Dream Car Giveaway.
• With the help of Thompson BMW and Thompson Performance Group in Doylestown, PA, Turn 14 Distribution ordered a fashionable Velvet Blue Metallic BMW Individual F95 X5 M Competition to help celebrate the X5’s 25th anniversary.
• The grand prize build will be tastefully modded with the standouts from the European aftermarket: Akrapovič, CSF, H&R, and Vossen.

BMW CCA loyalists, members of the marque’s massive American car club, have been tinkering, modifying, and enjoying the Ultimate Driving Machine to its fullest potential for 55 years. Quite similarly, as purveyors of the automotive aftermarket, Turn 14 Distribution is devoted to improving the status quo. We realized there was some like-mindedness in our passions, and eventually, we earned the bid to build BMW CCA’s Dream Car Raffle grand prize five years ago. Since then, Turn 14 Distribution has carefully chosen a varietal from the brand’s BMW M catalog, channeling Bavaria’s motorsport spirit and the best of the European aftermarket in equal measure to create a portfolio of modified halo cars that BMW CCA members crave.

MAKING HISTORY

Similar to last year’s G80 M3 Competition, which lined up with notable milestones for each company (50 and 15 years, respectively), our fifth consecutive effort was another opportunity to celebrate something special: the 25th anniversary of the BMW X5. Since its inception 20 years ago, the E53 X5 rewrote the SUV rule book, so much that its reinterpretation of the segment earned it a new label: the Sports Activity Vehicle (SAV). As a direct descendant of the Ultimate Driving Machine, the E53 X5 was more agile than its utilitarian predecessors and its SAV peers. BMW’s longest-running SAV continued to evolve generationally, each taking a “more is more” approach to besting the last.

 THE F95 X5 M COMPETITION

That philosophy has led to BMW M’s most ambitious X5 to date: the F95 X5 M Competition. In Competition guise, it produces 616hp and 551 ft-lbs of torque which rockets this 5,500 lb SAV to 60mph in only 3.7 seconds. That grin-inducing thrust comes courtesy of BMW’s S63 4.4-liter bi-turbo powerplant which the brand also shoves into its current M5 and M8. In layman’s terms, the totality of the F95 X5 M Competition’s numbers means that it is the boss of BMW’s SAV lineup. XM included.

Couple this truck’s stats with the anniversary year, and it was a no-brainer choice for Turn 14 Distribution and BMW CCA. The harder decisions followed: choosing the perfect color from the BMW Individual catalog and how we’d modify the Ultimate Driving M SAV. The former would take us to our usual stomping grounds—Thompson BMW—our local M Certified Center that, on top of industry-leading knowledge about the BMW M brand and its products, is a destination for customers who want to examine the BMW Individual program in detail. Our Client Advisor, Joe Sumanth, walked us through the “Individualizer” and after some back and forth, we landed on Velvet Blue Metallic—a hue that handsomely straddles the line between blue and purple. It was a brave move that’d either look fantastic or fail miserably, especially considering the canvas size of the X5. The verdict would have to wait eight long weeks before we’d know whether our decision paid off.

FIRST LOOK

The agonizing anticipation came to a head after those two months ticked by. Did we make the right choice or did we make a big, bad, $156,000 misjudgment? As the garage doors to Thompson BMW finally lifted, the reaction on our faces told the full story: our gamble paid off. The Velvet Blue Metallic paint looked amazing, especially on the 2025 X5 M Competition—the second year of the model’s LCI (Life Cycle Impulse) refresh.

PLANS AHEAD

In the interim of seeing the car in the flesh, we used every available opportunity to mull over the X5 M Competition’s mod list. Turn 14 Distribution’s long-standing industry relationships help us curate components that speak to the modern BMW enthusiast and drive BMW CCA’s magnetism forward. Because of that, there are some familiar names on our X5 M Competition’s mod list—Akrapovič, BMC, CSF, Future Classic—and a bounty of others—Genie Company, H&R, Vossen, XPEL—that are shining in the European space today.

Over the next couple of months, we will be chipping away at showing you exactly how the Turn 14 Distribution x BMW CCA X5 M Competition was built up until the BMW CCA Dream Car Raffle drawing in October. If you haven’t already, become a BMW CCA member and grab your raffle tickets today!

Thank you to Akrapovič, BMC, CSF, Future Classic, H&R, Thompson BMW, Genie Company, Vossen, and XPEL for contributing to this year’s grand prize build. We are excited to give this X5 M Competition away to one lucky BMW CCA member soon.

Gallery