Here's what it's like to live with the new BMW M5

The BMW M5 is a very expensive car. Six years ago the F10 M5 cost £73,000 basic. Back in 2005 the V10-engined E60 M5 was £63,000. This one is £89,645 before you’ve stuck an option on it.

I tried to resist when speccing this one for its time in the Top Gear Garage, but you have to have the sports exhaust (£1,100) and a car this heavy needs a set of carbon ceramic brakes (£7,495).

I would have done without the £1,195 Comfort Pack (heated seats and steering wheel, plus display key), but I wanted the split-fold seats it includes to add a measure of estate-style practicality. I’m a sucker for a wagon. You can’t have the M5 as one, more’s the pity. The soft-close doors, cooled, massage seats and perfumed air of the £1,995 Premium pack I probably could (and should) have done without. Why? Because the M5 is a sodding super saloon, not a luxury car.

It does do a good impression of the latter though. The seats are big and enveloping, there’s a cushioned plumpness to the steering wheel, suspension noise is insulated, engine noise subdued, there are cameras all around and gesture control.

And it doesn’t look sporty. This is an early disappointment – no metalwork changes over the standard saloon, just different bumpers. The colour, wheels and badge are the items that set it apart. The M3 I ran three years back wasn’t like this – it had proper stance.

But I remember seeing the tacky illuminated badges in the seats of the M3 and worrying it had lost focus and was more concerned with flim-flam than fiery dynamics. Not a bit of it. Proper handful, that car. I adored it. And the M5 is cut from the same cloth. Scratch away the luxury layer and you find a very positive, shockingly fast car.

Two weeks after the BMW M5 arrived I took it to the Lake District. This was an important moment. Up until that point I’d spent a lot of time in it, but it had all been on motorways. To South Wales, down to Exmoor, up to Liverpool.

1500 miles calmly done, but not much evidence of personality, no real justification for the hefty £89,645 price tag (£101,900 with options, making this a six-figure super saloon), no real idea of what happens when you uncork 600bhp of all-wheel-drive M5.

What had happened? Why was the M5 not straining at the leash? Because it’s not an extrovert, this new M5. That’s the Mercedes-AMG E63. In this one you have to want it to play before it’ll wake up.

So all I’d been aware of for two weeks was that the ride was a bit too busy to be genuinely effortless and the Pirelli P Zeros kick up a little more noise than more regular tyres in a 530d, but I wasn’t complaining because I had massage seats and soft-close doors.

That’s how I’d been using it. But then, late one starry night, M5 and I came across the A592 Kirkstone Pass. I pressed the so far unpressed cherry red M button on the steering wheel (Sport dampers, Sport Plus engine, Comfort steering) and had a drive on this tiny, twisty road.

And it was a revelation. The engine packs such a massive, instant punch, the eight-speed automatic gearbox is remarkably snappy, and above all, the body control is rock solid, fabulous. OK, the steering has little feel and I’m still not sure which of the steering modes suits the car best (Comfort has less weight, makes the car feel calmer, but the burliness of Sport Plus is probably more apt).

Until that point I’d seen the M5 as a destroyer of autobahns, now I see it’s so much more than that. Before it arrived, I’d been concerned because I wasn’t that excited about it. Ridiculous, I know, but I saw it as too big, too heavy, just another autobahn barge.

But after that drive the next few months were looking considerably brighter. I still can’t quite get over how well it went down that road, how much grip it found, the balance in the chassis, how well the AWD system managed the vast torque (553lb ft from 1800rpm to 5600rpm), and just how chest-crushingly fast it accelerates. I’ll tell you more about that another time.

So that was a good drive. Now let me tell you about a bad one. Early morning at a petrol station, and the first time I’ve had to put 95 octane in the M5. Had to. A legacy of fuel light chicken and bad planning. No issue, I think, the twin-turbo V8 might prefer Super, but the manual says it’ll cope with 91. In went the 95, and 50 miles later, on came the engine warning light.

This was soon followed by actual stuttering. Then the engine cut out. Hmm. Given how self-protecting engines are, surprise reigned when it fired back up. Only to stutter and fail again about a mile later. In it went to BMW. They could find nothing wrong, and in the meantime I’d been in touch with Shell who were adamant there was nothing amiss with the fuel and no potential for water to have got in to the pumps.

So back it came and on I went. And then it happened again. And again. And again. So much so that I managed to identify a pattern. It was happening coming into slow urban driving after long motorway journeys.

Fine at higher speeds, but once down to a town trundle the engine light would come on and I had about 10 seconds to find somewhere to get out of the way before it stalled. It would restart, do another half mile and then the same would happen again. And so on. Irritating and stressful.

Off back to BMW went the car, while I started hunting on forums. Ah. Here we go – US sites reporting F90 M5s with fuel pump issues. Pressure drops after long consistent running. Sounded familiar. A briefing note about this issue must have circulated around BMW, because this time they were on the case. The trouble was mine can’t have been the only car to have issues, because the fuel pump was on back order.  

Now it’s fixed and running absolutely perfectly. How do I feel about this incident though? Surprised mainly. You don’t expect new model bugbears from BMW.

Spec: 4395cc, V8 twin-turbo, AWD, 591bhp, 553lb ft, 0-62mph in 3.4secs, 155mph (ltd), 26.9mpg, 241g/km CO2, 1855kg, £89,645 OTR (£101,900 as tested)