BMW M5 - long-term review

Some good news to report. The M5 looks great at dawn. Really helps to soften the lines and reduce the sheer scale of the thing. In other news I’ve just achieved my best ever mpg figure from the M5. I know, I know, it’s not what the car should be about. But this is the way the M5 plays the game. For Porsche adding hybrid means adding performance, but for BMW adding hybrid means improving economy and emissions.

The system is essentially the same as fitted to the regular 530e plug-in hybrid. Slightly more power and torque (194bhp/206lb ft plays 181bhp/184lb ft) for the M car, electric supplied from a fractionally smaller battery (18.6kWh plays 19.4). But in essence BMW’s M division hasn’t done anything different or unique for the M car. I’m sure they’ve tuned and tweaked and god knows that making a hybrid work at all must be furiously complex, which is why it’s had to work with the same building blocks as the rest of the company.

But the end result is that the hybrid performs the same role here as in the regular 5. It feels like its primary role is to aid economy rather than boost performance. So let me tell you about that. Recently I had a couple of weeks of perfect hybrid-suiting work trips. Daily drives of about 100-150 miles where I could get home in the evening, battery depleted and charge on cheap overnight electric. A full 18kW charge costing about £1.20 and delivering over 40 miles of e-range makes for cheap motoring and smug faces. As a result of this I managed to stretch a tank of fuel out for an almost diesel-like 488 miles – with 200 of those miles costing me practically nothing. Overall tank average was 48.7mpg.

Enough economy chat. Because to combat that I then charged off to France and did no recharging whatsoever. This was the M5's third cross-continental trip this year, a straight blat down to the Med coast near Narbonne, 751 miles in a single hit. At 27.7mpg. Sorry, couldn’t resist. But this stuff is right in the M5's wheelhouse. It just demolishes distance, purring calmly along, barely having to work.

I just wish during the hours spent in its cockpit that it was prettier to look at inside. It’s all rather monolithic and overwhelming. The screens are a fiddle to get information from and the graphics are daft, the haptic switchgear isn’t a patch on actual buttons and BMW used to do really good, usable steering wheel buttons. No longer. It is beautifully made, solid in a way that reassures me it would still feel this way in many years time, but it’s not welcoming. I hate to say it, but pretty much every German brand is doing interiors better than this right now.

But not exteriors. At least not according to the populace of southern France. Every single time I parked up, someone would ask if it was OK to take a picture the moment I was out of the car. Every time I came back to it, a crowd had gathered. Best of all was when I was out in the middle of nowhere at dawn taking these shots and a bloke cycled past, stopped, came back and said “I know you, you’re Ollie from Top Gear”. Small world. Merci Fabien. And thanks for the driving road recommendations.

Anyway, I found this M5 appreciation oddly reassuring. I liked the fact that people knew what it was and were leaning over 911s to get a better angle, loved their reaction when I told them how much power it had. Never had to go further and discuss that because of its vast weight it’s actually slower than the last gen car.

I don’t think the M5 is a classic piece of design, but it is modernist and of its time. I’m beginning to think of it as the Mansory-isation of everything. But I do love the rear three-quarter view. Well done whoever did the design job of melding the estate back onto the ungainly saloon. Also I remain convinced that Isle of Man green is the very best colour.

I’m going to end where I started as I might as well get all economy talk out of the way here. As I said, this was the M5's third big Euro-haul in the last six months – the mileage is ticking towards 12,000 now. Each has been done with different outerwear. First time it wore a roofbox to the Alps, then a towbar bike rack. This time nothing on the outside at all. This is hardly scientific you understand, but over the course of each 1,600-odd mile round trip the M5 averaged 22.5mpg with headgear, 24.5 with bikes on the back and 26.3 with no extra drag. If you’re still reading this far I figured you might be interested.