Welcome back, it's mark with Exotic Car Play Place. I just want to
walk you through two of the worst and best modes of the BMW E60 M5. there's a lot
of reputation for its SMG transmission, some good, some not so good, and I'm gonna
show you the modes here. The worst mode you want to drive the BMW M5 in and then I'm
going to give you the mode I like to drive it in because I truly believe it's
the most exciting mode, aside from the M mode of course,
because that in itself to me, I leave that as a treat, so I never usually
activate the M mode for normal driving. But I'll show you the worst mode to
drive these cars in. Number one for wear and tear, because if you put it in the
dumbest mode, that's usually what you have is accelerated clutch wear, and it's
also the least pleasurable to drive. And the other mode is going to be the best
mode in my opinion, the most sporting mode, aside from the M mode of course.
It's going to be the best on the clutch, and it's going to give you the most
pleasurable driving experience. Now let's go down here, so let's start with the
concept of driving this in regular D mode or drive mode. This here right now,
we're in neutral, and if I switch this over, I'm gonna put the foot on the brake,
switch it over, you'll notice I'm in manual. If I toggle this one more time
now I'm in D, I'm also in D, and no here's the other thing, if I put this all the
way to the left, keystroke that to the left, now you'll
notice over here that is my transmission shift speed setting, and I'm down on one
bar which is the slowest shift speed available and it's in Drive. This is
truly the dumbest mode to drive this car in and the reason it's the dumbest mode
is number one, the drive mode becomes less of an engaging experience in
general, and it's okay if you've got your hands full of coffee and you're doing
your makeup or whatever, you're gonna do just fine, but I'm gonna give you a
little demonstration here. So we're gonna drive off indeed.
We're shifting. See here I'll show you, I'll count one, two. It's a full two
second count between shifts, where it's
disengaged and where it's reengaged into the next gear. A two second count when
you're driving with half throttle. That is a really, really, ugly Drive shift, and
and it's not a lot of fun to drive it that way, because overall it just makes
it really you know really kind of sloppy and slow and lurchy in traffic, and it's
just not too fun to drive. So you'll give it again
one, two, it's a full two seconds and that's really ugly, so that's not the way
to drive this car. Now the best way to drive the SMG transmission, the SMG 3
transmission in the E60 M5 is in the following settings, so number one always
drive the car in manual. Mainly for the main reason that this is
actually a sporting car, as a sporting car in a sporting character, you want to
have that control. A lot of people don't even think the automated manuals today
are even a true sports sporting type of vehicle. They're, you know, there's
certainly some benefit in having a manual stick shift, you really are fully
engaged, but even a lot of the paddle shifts aren't bad today, but at the bare
minimum you want that control. So you want to shift this to manual down here.
So you're gonna toggle us one more time and you'll notice now it shows it in
four, so that means it's in manual four, and that's how you want to drive it. So
we're in manual four, but now what we're doing is driving it in kind of the
midway position, because when I toggle it over to manual from even though I was on
shift speed one on the automatic mode, when I toggle it to manual, it defaults
it, so it basically puts the shift speed into the midpoint, which happens to be
three bars on this car is the midpoint. So it defaults it to manual or
defaults at the three bars. Once I toggle it to manual, and that's that's okay
that's not a bad way to go, because they say you know BMW puts it in a position
where most people would find it palatable if you will. For me I also
give this little button down here two keystrokes to the right and that takes
me up to the full five bars on the dashboard here as you'll notice. Right now
I'm in third gear, five full bars that down, now gives me the fastest shift speed
available in the default setting. Now we all know, and I've given you some
demonstrations in the past about this already, that there is actually a sixth
mode, but sixth mode only works when you deactivate traction control. So you do
not want to turn the traction control off in daily
driving. That's my advice. You do that and you're asking for trouble, because if you
daily drive these cars you can experience any number of inclement
weather conditions, poor driving conditions because of gravel loose road,
you know loose gravel on the roads can cause you problems, and it can cause
slippage and you don't need to go off the road when you're on the street.
That's the last thing you need, so really I wouldn't advise taking the
traction control off, unless you're taking the car to the racetrack, in which
case you don't have insurance that's void anyway, so that's your own risk, but
at the end of the day, this is the mode that I would recommend operating at,
because number one, it can you give you the most enjoyment, it's gonna be less of
that jerkiness, and it basically makes that bad reputation go away. No it's not
as fast as a twin clutch, dual clutch transmission that you find today, but
operating it this way still gives it that sensation. It still shifts quite
quickly and you don't have that problem of lurching and it's actually
relatively enjoyable to drive. So everybody, I really hope you enjoyed that
video. This is the most desirable way to drive in an E60 m5 with the SMG 3
transmission, and it actually brings out the spirited nature of the car. So thanks
again, make sure you subscribe to the channel, talk to you real soon guys. See
you then. Bye bye.