Say hello to the BMW X5M and X6M ‘Black Fire’ editions

Here we have special editions of BMW’s two big, fast SUVs – the X5 and X6M. They’re called ‘Black Fire’, and they are very black indeed. Both get special Sapphire Black Metallic paintwork, black kidney grilles, black-painted 21-inch forged alloy wheels and carbon-fibre mirror caps. Inside you get two-tone red/black leather, and can option an Alcantara wheel. The overall effect is, erm, dark. And quite murderous. 

BMW says “black is powerful, black is exciting, and black is exclusive” and that the same can be said of these special editions. It’s right about the power thing – there are no mechanical changes over a standard X5 or X6M, which means 567bhp from the 4.4-litre V8. 0-62mph happens in 4.2 seconds thanks to rear-biased xDrive AWD and the eight-speed automatic gearbox. 

Exciting? You could argue that any car with 567bhp is exciting, so we’ll give BMW that one too. But exclusive? No. A fifth of all cars registered in the UK last year were black. And we wouldn’t be entirely surprised to learn a healthy proportion of X5s and X6s sold here are specified in black, too. 

Available from August, but we don’t know if they’re coming to the UK, how much they’ll cost or how many BMW will make.