BMW i5 Touring review

For about three generations of 5 Series cabin, it felt like BMW reached peak ergonomics and left it well alone. In the i5, those days are over. This is a much less sober place to be, more about surprise and delight. It may woo younger buyers into a 5 Series. It will almost certainly baffle some of the 5 Series faithful. In many areas, it’s certainly flawed.

How so?

Where BMW’s let itself down is in its quest for minimalism. It gets a ‘Curved Display’ consisting of a 12.3in driver's display that merges seamlessly into a 14.9in touchscreen, but while it looks mega, it's not that easy to use.

For example, a simple seat adjustment is now buried in the depths of the touchscreen. Or shortcutted via a touch-sensitive seat menu button on the door that’s much quicker… if you were born with triple-jointed wrists. Ugh.

It’s needlessly fiddly to tweak the direction of heater airflow, and because the vents have been engineered out of view the open-close function is a touch-sensitive panel job. Who signed that off?

The iDrive clickwheel at least remains, but the glossy panel that surrounds it is impossible to use on a bright day, and is rendered a smeary mess immediately after your hapless passenger has been enlisted to help delve into the sub menus. BMW’s still not seen sense with the main menu screen either: it’s a mass of blue tiled icons on a blue background. Who thought that was a good idea?

Elsewhere, you’ll make up your own mind on the seaside neon ambient lighting inlaid into the dash. One or two of the textured trim fillets are an acquired taste, too.

But can it still ‘wagon’ properly?

Yes. The boot is a commodious shape with a wide loading sill and BMW is rightly proud of the fact that the various powertrain options and suspension set-ups offering in the Touring don’t impinge its boot space, which is 570 litres in five-seater mode and 1,700 litres with the rear seat backs folded down; a spring-loaded doddle. That’s slightly less than the VW ID.7 Tourer, but does trump the Audi A6 Avant e-tron. And neither of those gets a frunk, which the BMW does.

Still, under the boot floor there’s stowage for a charging cable and room to stow the usual cumbersome load bay cover. An electric tailgate is standard, though BMW wagon fans of yore will bemoan the loss of the novel split tailgate which allowed owners to open the rear glass without having to stand around watching their nails grow while the tailgate motors up and down.

BMW says it did lots of analysis and owners weren’t using the heavy, complicated-to-make split tail mechanism, so it’s been binned. We’ll miss it. You too? Buy a 3 Series Touring while you still can…

Oh, and because the battery cells are in the floor, passengers might find space is slightly more pinched than they were expecting.