Well, it was involved. And expensive (the special order paint cost $5000). But here's how it happened. Last spring my wife and I decided we wanted a diesel X5, and knew that the LCI 2011's would be released shortly. So we waited. But when the LCI's came out, she wasn't very fond of the available colors (which she characterized as mostly a lack of color: silver, a couple of grays, black, etc. - deep sea blue was a possibility, but my 1-series 'vert is deep sea blue, so that was out and Vermillion Red just didn't turn us on). So she was poking around the internet and found that in every country of the world OTHER THAN the U.S., you can customize your X5 under BMW's Individual program, which includes some terrific (in our view) colors: Ruby Black, Azurite Black, Moonstone, etc.

So, we first asked our dealer about the possibility of getting a special-order Ruby Black X5; our sales rep contacted the head of regional sales, who said "no way." Frustrated by that, I wrote a letter to Jim O'Donnell, the CEO of BMWNA, noting that since all the X5's in the world were built in Spartanburg, there must be Ruby Black paint lying around there somewhere; so why couldn't BMW paint an X5 in Ruby Black for us? After all, if I lived in Windsor, Ontario, instead of Savoy, Illinois, I could order Ruby Black with no problem.

I actually never expected an answer to this letter. But to my great surprise, about two weeks later someone called from BMWNA and said that Mr. O'Donnell had asked this person to follow up on my "complaint." He in turn had contacted the production folks at Spartanburg, the U.S. sales execs, and the guys in Germany, all of whom agreed that it should be possible to paint an X5 in Ruby Black for us, if we were willing to pay the $5000 upcharge.

So, we asked this person to contact our dealer, and he put our dealer in touch with the plant manager at Spartanburg, who then got the production manager involved, and after several weeks, we had an order for a custom-painted X5 35d.

So . . . I don't know how to tell you to get this done other than write BMWNA, or have your dealer contact the right people at BMWNA. I suspect a large dealer who is better plugged-in to the BMW "power structure" could handle this for you. The key is not to take "no" for an answer if you really, really want this done. As the sticker below shows, it can be done!

John C.