This then is the new 6th generation BMW M5. It has a 600 horsepower 4.4-litre twin turbocharged
V8 and to put that onto the road it has four-wheel-drive. On the outside, subtle isn’t it? It looks
a bit like any other 5-series. It isn’t pumped up, muscled out like say a BMW M2 but
look closer. There are vast cooling ducts at the front, quad exhausts surrounding a
diffuser at the rear and in between those, a carbon fibre roof. What’s it like?
This is a big car, you know, it’s 5 metres long, sort of 2 metres wide, 1.95 tonnes. Actually,
this is a twisty road and it’s quite pleasant actually, it’s quite appealing, it feels
quite dynamic, everything is on, four-wheel-drive is on in its stable mode but because the steering
is quite quick, not much more than 2 turns, 2 and a bit turns, that’s quite a fast direction
change but isn’t nervous in a straight line which is important in a car like this, isn’t it?
Because it’s built for going ridiculous speeds on autobahns but let’s say that you
don’t just want to go quietly, smoothly and easily from one place to another,
you want a bit more dynamism.
Okay, so there’s quite a lot to talk you through
mechanically which is why I’ve stopped. There's a 4.4 litre V8 at the front, there was before,
but this one has new turbochargers, the injection pressure is up to 350 bar and it now drives
through a conventional automatic rather than a dual clutch auto. More significantly than
that, it drives through all four wheels but this is where it all gets heinously complicated.
Right, we get modes for everything. Right, normally it is rear-wheel-drive biased and
it pushes power to the front when it needs it, that’s even in standard four-wheel-drive
mode. There is also a sport four-wheel-drive mode which puts even more power to the back
and then only a little bit to the front and then if you do certain things with your stability
control to turn it off, you can put it exclusively into rear-wheel-drive, as well you might.
But even with DSC off, you can still choose between the three different four-wheel-drive
modes and they still do three different things. On top of that, there are three modes for
the engine response, sport, sport plus, efficient. There are three modes for the adaptive dampers,
comfort, sport and sport plus. There are three modes for the steering weight, doesn’t change
the steering speed or anything, it’s just electric power assisted steering, conventionally
but you can put that into comfort, which is light, through to sport plus which is really
heavy. On top of all of that as well and on top of your gear lever, instead of just a
sport mode for the gear lever, god there’s a sport mode for the gear lever as well. You
can also then put these up and down on it and it just changes the sort of revs that
the gearbox changes up at, I quite like that actually, that works quite well. Anyway, well
let’s go for a drive and we’ll see how all of this pans out.
I will start off then with everything in soft mode, if you like. So I’ve got the engine
in efficient, I’ve got the dampers in comfort, I’ve got the steering weight in comfort,
the noisy exhaust off. This is, after all a business express so it’s fair to assume
there will be times when all you want to do is sit back, relax, just get to somewhere
briskly, quietly and easily. So, reasonably comfortable actually, the engine is, what
we’re doing 94 kmh so 50 mph and the engine has faded to a nothingness, gearbox is changing
up quickly, smoothly, easily and the ride is fine. You can get 19” wheels as standard,
you can get 20’s as an option, this is them. Comes on a sort of not quite iron disk as
standard with carbon ceramics as an option. They reduce the unsprung mass as well as just
lasting a bit longer on circuit. Let’s put it in, confirm, driving stabilisation.
Right, now I’m in DSC off. You see, this is where it’s daft isn’t it? It’s just too much
going on, because I need to go to the menu, need to go to vehicle, go to M setup, My xDrive,
right now I can start changing that, but I’m already on the road I want to be on so I possibly
think there’s too much going on on the choice front. It’s no wonder you have to have two
of these buttons up here which have got a thing programmed in but anyway I’m going
to go into four-wheel-drive sport. In any of the four-wheel-drive modes, it’s supposed
to only really put power to the front when the rears start to slip. So, right so the
thinking is, it’s mostly rear-wheel-drive anyway and pushes power to the front when
it needs to so it kind of feels BMW-ish in that front engine, rear-wheel-drive fashion
all the time anyway. Let’s put me exhaust on, there’s yet another thing you can change!
It does augment the noise slightly through the speakers which is why it sort of comes
through there but by all accounts, BMW has tried to up the ante of that exhaust noise
and I think it’s fair to say they’ve probably succeeded actually. Not as angry as an E63
AMG, those AMG engines do make a really special noise inside and out, this is more refined
than that I guess, more subdued. The same goes for the exterior doesn’t it really?
This is a bit more, actually I think probably the ride comfort to, this is a bit more of
an executive car that then does the sports saloon stuff when you really want it to.
An E63 is always that bit more angry, that bit more edgy. I tell you what, this is good,
this has got loads of poise and even, interesting, even on the road just if you just give it
a little bit of a tickle of the throttle out of the corner it just straightens the line
even in four-wheel-drive sport mode. It’s quite rewarding, engaging, I like that. However
the most amount of fun, I suspect will come if you put it in two-wheel-drive, we might
need a circuit for that. We have one, not for very long, couple of laps. That’s ESC
deactivated, configure xDrive and now I’m in two-wheel-drive and immediately there’s
the sort of benin balance that a big leisurely rear-wheel-drive car… Oh I like it, I like
it, I like this car a lot. But let’s see what it’s like to experience on the road
in two-wheel-drive mode, I suspect 95% of the time you won’t notice any difference
whatsoever but just as you exit corners it just does feel that little bit more agile. Never
gets quite as angry as an E63, does it? It never gets quite as growly but it’s always
that little bit softer I think, it’s always that little bit more subtle, I suppose M cars
quite often are. You know what, I think I rather like that, I think you’d rather like
that too. What I like about it is it’s not just doing what an E63 does, the AMG and BMW
M both do pretty different things, similar things but in a slightly different way and
I’ve got an awful lot of time for both of them actually. Which would you chose?
You know I think it’s a really tough question and probably a question for another day.