BMW M5 - long-term review

Go on, guess which one’s bigger. The red one. No, the other red one etc. Although the car is close and the house is further away, I reckon you can see which way this one’s going. The Guinness-recognised ‘Smallest House in Great Britain’ measures 3.05 metres deep by 1.82 metres wide which, expressed in property terms, gives it a square footage of 59.7. The BMW M5: 108.4.

Even if you turned the two-room-plus-staircase property into a bungalow it would still shade less acreage than the M5. Six people once lived in there, four kids sleeping in hammocks hung from the rafters. Mad.

It’s bolted to Conwy’s medieval walls, walls which very nearly earned themselves a BMW gargoyle last weekend. Gates in and out of the walled town through which two mounted men could ride abreast only just permit the passage of one M5 with its mirrors out. I spent the whole weekend holding my breath, while vexed locals in Fiestas tutted behind.

It’s too big. We all know that cars grow, that the Polo now is as big as the Golf three generations back, but the 5 Series has made that jump in one: it’s the same size as the last generation 7 Series – the G11 that only went off sale three years back. The 5,096mm-long M5 is just 2mm shorter, but a whopping 68mm wider and 40-odd mms taller as well. Some have banged on about wanting an M7 over the years – well here it is people.

Yes it’s a whopper to park but that doesn’t bother me unduly. I just need an extra shuffle to make sure I’m not overlapping the lines. Plus pray no-one parks next to me.

It’s the size of the thing on B-roads. Now I appreciate that super saloons such as this and Audi’s RS6 are aimed at bigger territories – their natural environment is hunting autobahns and sweeping along A-roads. But our best roads to drive are B-roads.

I ran a last gen M5 back in 2018 and it was just wieldy enough to slot down B-roads. This one isn’t. Whatever fine margins exist that allow cars to fit down country roads with confidence, this latest M5 has overstepped them. It’s too nerve-wracking, it looms large for oncoming traffic, you can’t relax and find smooth lines when you’re constantly ricocheting between white lines and hedges. And that’s if you’ve remembered to turn the lane keep off.

It does drive well, I enjoy the powertrain’s massive, effortless, immediate thrust, the steering’s accuracy, but finding somewhere to relish all of this is challenging.

Not that I was planning to charge across Snowdonia with a pair of bikes on the roof. Not an official roof rack for the M5’s carbon fibre top, but I’ve extolled the virtues of Seasucker racks before. Did belt ‘n’ braces it this time – that’s ten suckers up there to spread the load given one of the bikes was electric. The thing is, Specialized’s Levo SL is a lightweight e-bike. Where most are 25kg, this one’s only 17.5kg. Be handy if BMW applied the same philosophy to the M5, wouldn’t it?

But I’ve become less aware of the weight in day-to-day use. I’ve been religiously topping up with electricity, using that for all local journeys and that’s allowed me to stretch over 400 miles from a 60-litre tankful, averaging about 37mpg overall. Leaving home with a full charge meant the M5 averaged 34mpg on the 240 miles to Wales, against 27mpg on the way back. Still, 27mpg is good – it’s better than I ever got from the old M5, despite the fact this one is 500kg heavier and powered by the same 4.4-litre twin turbo motor.

The main difference comes from the new car’s ability to harvest charge efficiently en route and use it wisely to aid the V8. If you do run the battery completely flat, the M5 will use engine power to pop a bit back in just in case you need all 717bhp. It’s a very good hybrid system – with one small personal niggle.

I’ve set it up to start in electric, but sometimes – for instance when pulling away from a set of lights – I accidently pull a paddle for second. This instantly fires the engine in the lower gear. Bit jerky and rowdy. The M5 then refuses to go back into electric mode for several minutes. I had exactly this issue with the long-term Range Rover PHEV 18 months ago. Small issue – just need to educate my fingers.

Otherwise I am getting more comfortable operating the M5 on the move. The shortcut swipe on the screen is really useful, the clickwheel on the steering allows me to trek through loads of info, and I’m using the head-up display more. But it’s not exactly attractively or logically laid out. In fact the whole cabin design is rather bulky and oppressive.

But it’s fast, smooth, beautifully made and not bad value considering the complexity underneath. Plus it can turn its hand to lugging mountain bikes. But there’s another M5 that can do that better now, isn’t there? So tune in soon when this saloon will have morphed into a Touring.