Sunday 15th April 2018

BMW M5: PH Fleet

The new BMW M5 has already proven exceptionally mighty. Now we get to see what it's like to live with

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A BMW M5 has landed on the PH Fleet and its wheels have barely stopped turning since. It's blue outside, leathery inside, has a 600hp V8 and, well, it's a new BMW M5, so maybe that's not surprising: it has had a lot to do.

How good has it been on the jobs it has immediately been thrown into? Across PH and its sister titles it has been group tested against a Mercedes-AMG E63 and Cadillac CTS-V (and won), videoed alongside an E63 (and won), videoed along with a new Alpina B5 (still to be screened, but guess what?), it has been signed-up for the PH trip to Le Mans, and it has been through a full Autocar Road Test figuring session whose results are, also, as I write, still to be published.

I'll give you a sneak preview of those, mind: 0-60mph in 3.3sec, 100mph in 7.5sec, standing quarter-mile in 11.5sec at 125.1mph and a standing km in 20.8sec at 159.1mph. None of those, even the standing km, is more than seven-tenths of a second away from the times recorded by a Ferrari 458 Speciale. So it's quite quick.

There's a lot that's remarkable about those numbers, but mostly it's that they arrive despite the fact that, when all's said and done, this is a car that tips the scales at 1,940kg and still does all that a BMW 5 Series does.

It, as standard or optionally, seats five in great comfort, is nearly five metres long, has a 530-litre boot and split-fold (heated) rear seats, and a 68-litre fuel tank from which it can sip unleaded at 28mpg (though 21 is more likely, and 7.5 is possible).

It has a 4.4-litre, twin-turbocharged V8, which drives all four wheels via an automatic gearbox, though can be put into rear-wheel drive mode should the occasion and whim arise. There are contradictions to it, too, mind: it has a carbonfibre roof to save weight and yet soft-close doors which adds it. So it's a sports saloon yet one with massage front seats and a heated steering wheel, and a class leading kind of infotainment system that includes everything you could realistically ask for, and a few things you probably didn't.

As tested, then, it costs £101,900, thanks to a fair few options on top of the £87,940 list price. Both of which are a lot but, then, it does do quite a lot. It rides comfortably enough via its coil springs with adaptive dampers. It has grip and traction to spare in its standard 4WD mode, rather less in RWD, and overtakes things on a whim thanks to the engine's easy-going, boosted thrust and. It's both supremely easy and at the same time quite exciting to spend time in.

I still think that the sports saloon is at its zenith in the class below this - that the lighter, narrower Alfa Giulia and BMW M3, for example, are more entertaining to drive and are still quite refined enough. But there's very little arguing with how an M5 goes about things. It's one of the most capable cars on sale. In the way it calms nerves, eats miles and destroys tyres, I'm starting to think that perhaps it's eventhe most capable.

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FACT SHEET
Car: 2018 BMW M5
On fleet since: April 2018
Run by: Matt Prior
List price new: £87,940 (As tested £101,900, because: £1,995 Premium Package including soft-close doors, massage seats, ceramic finish for controls, £1,195 Comfort Package including steering wheel heating, seat heating all-round), £1,100 M Sports exhaust, £1,025 carbon engine cover, £7,495 carbon ceramic brakes, £260 M seat belts, £495 carbon/aluminium-look trim, £235 Apple CarPlay, £160 online entertainment)
Last month at a glance: High five to an M5 as BMW's fastest saloon joins the PH Fleet

[Images: Luc Lacey]

 

[rassi]

Maybe the least interesting piece of information in a 600 bhp supersaloon, but “68 litre fuel tank”? What made the F10 M5 a great cruiser was its 80 litre tank, as opposed to 70 litre in the normal F10.

Seems quite a backwards step, as the engine and consumption is very similar between new and old M5.