Blown head gasket
 

I am flabbergasted by this: this morning I overheated my 01 X5 with 74K miles. On my drive to work I did not notice anything unusual until I got off the freeway and saw steam coming from under the hood and the car immediately stalled. That's when I noticed the temp gauge was glowing red. Make a long story short, a shop wants to replace the head. Is that really always necessary in this scenario? I did not see the telltale white smoke after I restarted the car to pull off the road. Any advice?:conf

the head can be machined by a machine shop if its not suffering from creator size cracks and is not warped too badly, they usually charge $200-300 or so.
did the shop take the head out and inspect it or are they talking out of their behinds?

they supposedly did a 'chemical test' and found coolant in the oil. I read a thread that mentions this is not uncommon in BMWs. I will have the car flatbedded to an independent BMW only shop for a second opinion and to do any repairs.