It gives you a tone when you hit that speed. It's one of the options availabe under setup on the nav screen. It looks like you may need navigation for this. (p. 62 of the manual). Navigation... Car Data.....Limit... Change Limit.

 

I might be mistaken, but I suspect it's more a feature tied to the OBC, not the Nav... although yes you can modify it via the Nav. In my 1st Gen MCS, I have Nav, and I have that feature too.

The stupid thing about it, and the reason I really don't use it... it does give a tone when you cross the pre-set speed, however it also stops the tone after a few seconds, and won't go off again unless you go below the speed and back over it again. Also, if you have the stereo turned up, you never hear it anyway!

At least that's how it was in the 1st Gen. I wonder with the R56 if they made it more prominent and persistent... louder and continuing to beep away. Yes, that would be annoying, but if you didn't want the warning, you'd disable it in the first place!

 

It does the same thing on the R56, Edge. Which is why I do use it. Not that I can imagine driving at that speed (I'm not planning any track use, but who knows?), but, if for some reason I needed to, I wouldn't want the thing yacking constantly.

 

I believe the purpose of a tone or warning like that in any car is merely to warn you that you have driven over your "warning" speed ... that is all. Usually if your not set on cruise and are creeping up on the highway to a speed where you do not want to be at. Stereo? You use the stereo?

 

Now that it's broken in, I went for a little spin down A6. Analog speedo indicated ~145 mph, Digital speedo indicated 233 km/h (144 mph).

My Garmin GPS was indicating 225 km/h, which mini.de lists as the top speed. That translates to 139.82 mph, which mini.com lists (well, they list 139).

I'll bet the GPS is on the money, and the speedo is wrong.

On a different note; when my wife and I test drove an S we noticed the car was extremely stable at 110mph (I posted in another thread that she never drives that fast), and there was little sensation of speed... i.e.: you don't feel like you're going as fast as you really are. Once you exceed 110, the car becomes much less settled, particularly in the turns. That may explain BMW's effort to improve aerodynamics in this generation. In comparison, my Volvo ('05 S40 T5) was much more composed at speed. The mini of course handles twisty B roads much better. An "autobahn-cruiser" it's not, I'm afraid.