There’s a steel and aluminum bulldog in my driveway with an aggressive face, muscular shoulders and streamlined haunches that’s ready to take a bite outta some asphalt, concrete and my gas credit card.
The BMW X6M Competition is full of power and pace under its aluminum bonnet. It’s also full of grace in its red and black leather and carbon fiber-bedecked interior under a lowered, rounded roofline.
Introduced as Bayerische Motoren Werke’s mid-size luxury crossover in 2007, the X6 was essentially an X5 with a coupe-style roof – a fastback 5-door that looked sleeker from the beltline up. It’s definitely a niche product for BMW, with just over 9,000 of its three generations sold since that first-gen came out 18 years ago. The current third-gen edition was introduced in 2019 and got a significant refresh last year.
OK, so some folks may not like the bulldog reference, but let’s look closely.
2025 BMW X6M Competition Sports Aggressive Stance
There’s a discrete (compared to some other BMWs) set of classic 4-vane kidney grilles done in gloss black with a tri-color X6M badge, flanked by thin quad-element LED headlights with double arrow LED DRLs under glass. They’re white while running, amber when turn signaling. Under the grille gloss black flares into a huge lower intake with a central drive-safety sensor, flaring into angular side slits. The design juts out like a bulldog jaw. Side intakes with visible turbocharger intercoolers live on angular outer bumper edges, while aero slits funnel air over front rubber.
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Tightly fitted inside the squared-off flared fender lips are wide, staggered P295/35ZR21-inch front/P 315/30ZR22-inch Michelin Pilot Sport rubber along with gloss black fender vents behind those front skins, again with tricolor M badges. The flanks gets gentle sculpting over tightly flared sill. There are gloss black framed low side windows over a tightly curved roofline.
The Dravit Gray Metallic paint looks OK under clouds, but gains beautifully-deep bronze hints in the sun when shown at our local Jax Speed Shop car show. That’s where many noticed the rising beltline that flares into muscular rear fender shoulders over wider 22-inch rubber, along with those forked 10-spoke flack and buff silver alloy wheels with huge cross-drilled disc brakes visible.
That rising beltline ends in a high tail with slim black spoiler perched at the very end, meeting a very fast-backed rear window. LED strips glow within slim taillights that wrap around rear corners over a big X6 badge and corner reflectors that mimic the front’s side intakes. An aero-sculpted black lower fascia hosts big quad exhaust pipes that play music to many gearheads’ ears.
This BMW is an M in looks – and many parts elsewhere – but it’s so tall I could not clean the top center of the windshield, or the power moonroof of this Sports Activity Coupe, which is just over two inches lower than the X5M that shares the great stuff underneath.
2025 BMW X6M Competition’s Interior Checks All The Right Boxes
If the exterior is bulldog aggressive, the interior is almost Italian exotic with red and black leather, carbon fiber and alloy in particular. But that sexier lower (1.4-inches less headroom) roofline meant I had to duck my 6-foot frame to get in, then over the bolstered sport bucket seats, both up front with heat, cooling, massage and multiple power adjustments. There are memory presets for the driver. They held me superbly in corners, yet were comfy and not confining on road trips. I also liked the Alcantara suede headliner, racing striped seat belts, illuminated M insignias in the seatbacks, and sculpted black leather door and seat accents in black.
The driver faces a power tilt/telescoping, fat leather-rimmed steering wheel with all the usual audio, cruise and screen controls, plus small, dual carbon fiber peddle shifters and my fave: M1 and M2 buttons to preset engine/steering/suspension/exhaust modes. Then comes the 27-inch curved screen, part of last year’s updates, combining driver’s gauges and the like in front, sweeping into the central infotainment touchscreen.
The gauge screen can be formatted multiple ways, from simple digital speedometer, to a Sport and Track display with a big central gear position over the speedo. A bar graph 8,000-rpm (6,800-rpm redline) is on one side, and varied information is to the left. My favorite selection is G-Force. Another dsiplay parks speed and gear displays east and west framed by a v-shaped tachometer and speed graphs. You have your choice of trip or cruise control inforomation inside the display, or a front camera view.
The center touchscreen can host a wide navigation map, or segments of information like a map, audio, phone and drive mode, which are swipable left or right. It handles climate, vent position and seat heat/cool control, although those need a menu tap, then tap again. And while you can power up seat massage, again you need screen taps to fine-tune it.
BMW’s iDrive means hand gestures for volume, station scan up or down and more, while a solid voice command system handles so much more from fan speed and temperature to massage and phone calls. The 20-speaker Bowers & Wilkins sound system rocked me to the core. I loved the backlit speakers under alloy screens at night, with accent lighting nearby, plus soft-close doors and a Sky Lounge LED roof – lights glow around and through the special power moonroof with pop-up front.
The red leather-framed center console has a fiddly electronic gear shifter, drive mode and exhaust sound selection, plus a few other performance selectors and a tap/spin rotary controller that falls readily to hand. Dual cup holders under a sliding carbon fiber door can cool or warm a can or bottle, joined by an inductive phone charger. There’s also wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, and a concise color head-up display that also tells you how far away rough roads are..
That sloping rear roofline meant I really had to duck to get into the red and black leather rear seat. But once back there I found great leg and head room, plus full climate and seat heat/cool controls with big vents. There are side window shades along with a fold-down armrest with cup holders that includes quilted leather and metal trim. Rear seatbacks fold to expand the adequate rear cargo area, which is compromised by the sloping rear roof. I’d love a rear wiper, as that hatchback window’s ability to hold onto morning dew really cuts down on rearward vision. The rear window is also a bit narrow, negatively impacting the rearward view.
2025 BMW X6M Competition Performance & Handling
The BMW’s twin-turbo 4.4-liter V-8 is paired with a 48-volt mild hybrid system. The electric motor mounted is in an 8-speed automatic transmission, meaning combined output is a potent and healthy-sounding 617 hp and 553 lb.-ft. of torque. You can see the turbos and the plastic shroud looks cool. Also on display is the thick cross-shock tower brace, and beautifully cut steel front bulkhead bracing shows this beast means business.
Like I said, this M has lots of drive modes, from Efficient, Road, Sport/Sport+ and Track, plus Manual Shift Mode, and Launch Control power heading to an M xDrive system with Active M differential. The differential is electronically controlled with limited-slip that monitors driving conditions. It uses an electric motor to adjust the degree of lock on the rear axle to send power to the rear wheels that need it for handling.
I ended up doing most of my daily driving in the Efficient setting, which backs off throttle and shifts. The result was still a very quick SUV with fluid-yet-quick downshifts when requested, and a healthy exhaust note. And it’s quite quick, moving its 5,454 pounds quickly off the line to hit 60 mph in 3.9 seconds with no drama.
Switch to Sport mode – my M1 button pre-selection – and the X6M moves out even quicker from launch to hit 60 mph in a fast 3.5 seconds, with no wheelspin. If you use launch control, which is easy to set up, the X6M makes a brutally quick, yet controlled lunge off the line with the briefest whisper of wheelspin front and rear to hit 60 mph in 3.3 seconds. Four-wheel-drive and those meaty tires help. The G-force meter read .99Gs on launch, accompanied by a melodious exhaust bellow, the quad pipes “whoomping” at each firm upshift. There’s a throttle blip on smooth downshifts. With a mix of aggressive modes, then back to Efficient drive mode, and we saw 17 mpg at best.
Behind those big tires is a double-wishbone front suspension, and multi-link rear suspension with active anti-roll bars all-round, plus Adaptive M Suspension with electronically controlled dampers and active roll stabilization. The result is a firm ride in Comfort mode, quick rebound off bumps, with some buffering. But drive in Sport, Sport+ or Track mode, and the ride really firms up, making a good handling SUV work even better, and feel smaller than it is. The ride gets stiff in those sport modes, passengers feeling road imperfections, while those wide tires do transmit some bumps inside, and hiss a bit at highway speed. A friend heard that while on a Bluetooth phone call.
Toss this SUV into a corner, and the X6M shows what all that four-wheel-drive, big rubber and adaptive suspension can do. It’s flat in curves, agile even, with a precise steering feel with plenty of firmness and feedback in sport modes. On our skidpad, when really pushed, we had a hint of understeer – and 1.05Gs of lateral grip – in an SUV! In Sport modes that suspension stiffness, plus a rattle-free structure, means drama-free handling on the curvy bits, aided by an xDrive system that made our 12,000-mile-old SUV have a bit more rear-wheel-drive rotation in turns, but easy to catch. You know this is a heavy SUV at heart, but it plays so well, like an M, with a tight turning circle.
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With 15.6-inch front/15-inch rear cross-drilled, ventilated M Compound disc brakes with 6-piston front calipers, and adjustable brake feel, we had a very controllable pedal with bite up high and great control – stops from 60 mph were short, straight and quick with no fade after repeated hard use, a hang-in-your-belt 1.18Gs on the meter.
Pricewise, a base BMW X6 40i starts at $76,400; our X6M Competition starts at almost twice that: $129,700. Almost all we had is standard but the Executive Package ($3,100) adds heated front seats with massage, heated/cooled cupholders, soft-close doors, side window shades, and the LED roof. It also has the $1,700 driving assistance package with active cruise and lane-keep; and $1,950 paint for a MSRP total of $147,025.
Bottom line: All I can say is wow. When you push the X6M Competition, expecting 5,400-plus pounds of SUV to feel big, instead, it is controllably fast, amazingly agile and able to stop like an M2 Coupe. And that quad pipe symphony under a starry moonroof puts on quite a show!
2025 BMW X6M Competition Specifications
Vehicle type – 5-door, 5-passenger sports activity coupe
Base price – $129,700 (as tested: $147,025)
Engine type – twin-turbocharged, intercooled DOHC 32-valve aluminum block V-8
Displacement – 4.4 liter
Horsepower (net) – 617 @ 6,000 rpm
Torque (lb-ft) –553 @ 1,800 – 5,800 rpm
Transmission – 8-speed automatic w/manual shift and paddle shifters
Wheelbase – 117 inches
Overall length 194.8 inches
Overall width – 87.1 inches w/mirrors
Height – 66.7 inches
Front headroom – 38.3 inches
Front legroom – 40.4 inches
Rear headroom – 37.5 inches
Rear legroom – 35.7 inches
Ground clearance – 8.4 inches
Cargo capacity – 27.4 cu. ft./59.8 w/rear seat folded
Curb weight – 5,454 lbs.
Fuel capacity – 21.9 gallons
Mileage rating – 13 mpg city/18 mpg highway