Cars with navigation fitted from factory have the GPS antenna in the sharkfin. I've retrofitted navigation in mine, so I've placed it where the center speaker in the dash should be.

 

Margal two option that I know of that will work are:

1 fakra gps antenna about $15 on eBay. You can mount this in your center speaker grill which is empty unless you have the logic system or if a speaker was added. This works well. If you have the purple hue windshields for climate the antenna will not recieve properly and you would then have to use the free area on the front glass next to the rear view mirror.

2 chances are you already have a gps shark fin. Meaning that most of the cars that I know of come with the roll over GPS notification. On your tcu located in your left rear trunk area there should be a blue connector if you unplugged it you will get the SOS warning. You can connect the CCC fakra antenna directly to this and use the eBay antenna to plug to the ecu and just stick this up inside the trunk. It worked perfectly for me.

This is all for the CCC. If you want cic I am not too sure but many have done this already. If you can swing it financially this is the way to go,but it's quite a lot more money. If you go CCC you should be able to grab one up for 700 plus unless you find a really good deal somewhere.

 

Actually you can do option 2 in my post. All of the antennas have gps that is the transponder for the SOS message. However, the cars with nav must have another connection or additional antenna inside the fin. If you connect your CCC unit to the tcu and the tcu to the aftermarket antenna this will also work and the nav will then operate off the shark fin and the SOS will operate off the aftermarket antenna. Mine is magnetic and it's just stuck inside under top quarter panel. Everything works perfectly.

 

Not necessarily true.

Worst case, you will need a GPS antenna. They are like $10 on eBay. You should be able to put it UNDER the dash board, or run it somewhere else that isn't visible. GPS signals can go through plastic (afterall, their cases are plastic)

However, if you have navigation PREP or BMW assist, you already have a GPS antenna that can be used

 

Where I come from, BMW assist isn't an option. Neither is navigation prep, so I'm sorry if it'ts different in the US.

 

It might be worth taking a look at the TCU anyway, never know... Remove your left inner trunk trim, and remove the push pin locks that holds the next panel that is just forward of that. The TCU is located just inside on the left. You should see several Fakra cables connected. The blue one goes up to your shark fin. If you unplugged it your SOS message will appear, the good thing is that when you reconnect it the message goes out. You can unplugged this blue cable and then use an extension to connect this cable to the back of the CCC Nav. Now you need another antenna for the SOS which you can use the ebay magnetic one. As mentioned mine works perfectly, and I use the shark fin! There are many different things the sharp fin does and maybe this piece that you can use comes in just the basic. Yes, for all US cars, this is here.