Okay, maybe the 1-series M sort of is.
But take the example of the new 560-hp “M TwinPower Turbo” M5—Bimmer-nerd code: F10—that goes on sale in the U.S. late next summer as a 2013 model.
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You may scoff upon learning the M5’s price, expected to fall near $92,000. To that prodigious sum we say: How can BMW possibly sell a couple thousand copies per year so cheaply? What does the dedicated tooling cost, anyway? How much is it to change 10 things about an engine, including the induction system and compression ratio, and then recertify it? It’s a lot of Big Macs. Maybe not as many Big Macs as creating a bespoke V-10, as in the previous E60, but a lot.
The new M5 will assuredly be profitable. But whether it is spectacular or merely great—many people would put a 4300-pound luxury sedan that hits 60 mph in 3.7 seconds firmly in the former category—it’s definitely no parts-bin badge job.
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Launch control automatically dumps the clutch at about 3000 rpm and upshifts for you. When we finally did it right, the quarter-mile went down in 12 seconds flat at 122 mph. In another 6.3 seconds, the car was passing 150 mph. It pulls nearly 1.0 g braking from 70 to 0 in 165 feet. A skidpad figure will have to wait until we can get a car to test in the U.S.
Compared with an E60 M5 equipped with an automated manual transmission, the F10 is a half-second quicker both to 60 mph and through the quarter-mile, and 2.4 seconds quicker to 150 mph. The braking distance is seven feet longer, but then, the F10 is about 200 pounds heavier. Will the larding up of our favorite vehicles ever stop?
Well, with the M5, one must remember that it remains unapologetically a heavyweight. It is an executive express, a velvet-wrapped hammer, a shark in whale’s clothes. It is not a four-door Lotus Elise. BMW figures M5 owners are richer than M3 owners and that they want commensurate levels of luxury and gizmology. Indeed, you cannot select a gear, push a pedal, or turn the wheel in the new M5 without assistance from the many watchful computers monitoring your every bodily twitch. Even the roar of the M TwinPower Turbo (we just like saying that name), muffled by the turbos and the cabin soundproofing, is partly ersatz, enhanced by a playback of engine noise through the stereo system to give passengers a heightened “acoustic experience.” (Two noises in the M5 that aren’t artificial are the tick-a-click of the dual-clutch automatic doing its business and, in our test car, a distinct hum from the differential.)
Experiential acoustics aside, BMW goes to lengths to make the electronic boundary layer between you and the machine transparent, or, at least, subject to an off button. And if you forget that nearly everything you’re feeling, hearing, and doing has been run through a microprocessor, the car, like the Matrix, is a nice place to be.
A sense of security pervades its every motion on the road, even when you’re busting through 100 mph on a riptide of—dare we say it?—profoundly diesel-like torque. The M5 flies through sweepers with a doctor’s note excusing it from Mr. Newton’s lecture, remaining flat and cool and seemingly impervious to the lateral forces that should roll it heavily to the outside given its relatively compliant suspension. You can starch up the shocks with the “Dynamic Damper Control” button, but even on “Sport Plus,” the car doesn’t tramp.
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When a hairpin comes up, the default stability-control mode is an intrusive buzzkill, cutting power and tapping the brakes even when the M5 seems well within its impressive cornering limits. Switch to the more playful M Dynamic Mode and you begin to see why; the rear just leaps sideways when kicked by the ol’ M TwinPower Turbo. To its credit, BMW avoided making the M5’s chassis too safe and dull by dousing it with understeer, even if increasing numbers of BMWs now sell in markets with, ahem, new drivers. In this department, the M5 is unquestionably an M. Stand down the stability control entirely and watch the M5 bonfire its tires drifting sideways, spitting smoke and chunks of expensive Michelin Pilot Super Sport rubber.
Yet, a slight fog of artificiality is there. The steering does everything you could desire—everything, that is, except talk back with those little organic tugs and sags that make lively cars feel, well, alive. What does tug and sag a bit is the power delivery as the M TwinPower Turbo’s boost crests and falls. We’re not talking lag here because there really isn’t any, just faint disturbances in the g-force that will bother some old Jedi knights who love long, linear windups to stratospheric redlines.
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If the M5 achieves its stated goal of a 30-percent gain in fuel economy, combined mpg could reach 20 when the EPA gets around to rating it. BMW is also strongly hinting that the U.S. market will again get a manual-transmission option.
Change, like cold gazpacho, always has its haters. Atavists will doubtlessly cry out that M has abandoned them with all this turbo madness. To paraphrase a recent comment on our website: When the M5 got a V-8 for 1998, people said they missed the inline-six. When it got a V-10 for 2004, people longed for the V-8. That is all true, as is the fact that the new M5 remains a delectably sweet reward for personal financial success. And if the next M5 is a diesel-electric hybrid that hits 60 mph in three seconds flat, will we say the same? Maybe, but only if BMW comes up with an even better name than M TwinPower Turbo
E28: 1984–1988
The first M5s were hand-assembled by BMW’s Motorsport shop using a 3453-cc inline-six derived from the mid-engine M1. It made 282 horsepower for Euro buyers and 256 horses fully certified for the U.S. market, where lawyers won a class-action suit against BMW when U.S. sales rose above the promised 500 copies. It and the later E39 are the only M5s without wagon versions.
Global sales: 2211.
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Still hand-assembled by the Motorsport shop in Garching, north of Munich, the E34 debuted with a 310-hp, 3535-cc inline-six evolved from the E28’s engine. Perhaps miffed by the class-action lawsuit, Germany sent only this version stateside, while Europe got a 335-hp 3.8-liter in 1991 upon the debut of the Touring wagon. Just 1678 E34 M5s were exported to North America.
Global sales: 12,253.
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The first M5 built on BMW’s regular 5-series assembly line signaled the end of the M5’s direct racing lineage. The 4941-cc S62 V-8 produced 394 horsepower while drivers enjoyed the luxury of high-tech (for the times) amenities such as ABS and navigation. A wagon was considered, but ultimately BMW chickened out. By the final year, the base price rose to $73,195. It’s considered the benchmark M5 by many.
Global sales: 20,482.
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A horsepower war was on and AMG was winning, so this M5 got a 500-hp, 5.0-liter V-10 with a titular link to BMW’s Formula 1 engines. On paper, the E60 looked fabulous, but the cold ergonomics and lumpy SMG automated manual transmission ruined it for many. A late six-speed stick for U.S. buyers couldn’t resuscitate its crashing resale values.
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This traction/stability control button offers three settings: full on; M Dynamic Mode, which raises the intervention threshold to allow more wheelslip and tail wagging; and full off.
2. Sport throttle
Three settings—Efficient, Sport, and Sport Plus—tune the gas-pedal response to the driver’s mood and also crack open the exhaust (well, actually, a soundtrack of the car’s exhaust played through the stereo) for more cabin roar.
3. Dynamic Damper Control
The three settings—Comfort, Sport, and Sport Plus—electronically revalve the shock absorbers to alter their firmness.
4. M Servotronic
Again, three settings: Comfort, Sport, and Sport Plus, which vary the steering effort.
5. M DCT Drivelogic
In automatic mode, the three settings make the transmission shift schedule sportier, holding gears longer, speeding up the gearchanges, and engaging the clutch harder. It’s the same in manual mode except that you do the shifting.
6. Park-Distance Control
Turns the forward and aft proximity alarms on and off.
7. Surround-View cameras
Activates two small cameras near the front wheels for a view from the sides. Lets you keep an eye out for kids, pets, curbs, and 18-wheelers alike.
The M TwinPower Turbo 4.4-liter V-8 is known internally as the “S63 TU,” (for “technical update”), a term that marks its evolution from the older S63 already installed in the X5 M and X6 M.
The basics remain unchanged: The 90-degree aluminum block is crowned by reverse-flow heads that draw induction air from the sides of the engine and exhaust it to the center, where the headers and twin Honeywell turbos lie in the block’s vee. A spider web of individual tubes supplies each twin-scroll turbo with the exhaust gas of four cylinders—two cylinders from the left bank and two from the right. For each turbo, the respective firing orders of the feed cylinders provide equally spaced spurts of exhaust energy.
The new M5 is the first M to adopt Valvetronic, a BMW technology that meters intake air by varying intake valve lift instead of with butterflies (a backup throttle plate remains for crisis scenarios). Because of the bulky valve hardware and the limitations it places on engine speed, the M division has until now spurned Valvetronic. But BMW has downsized and lightened the components and reshaped the contact surfaces to enable the S63 TU’s 7200-rpm redline, 200 rpm higher than the X5 M’s.
The turbo compressors grow by about 10 percent to generate additional volume and 21.8 psi of boost, a gain of 4.4 psi. The large boxes hanging off the front of the engine are the air-to-water intercoolers, closely coupled to the turbos to shorten lag time. They are twice the size of those in the X5 M to limit intake temps at a relatively chilly 131 degrees for higher air density and power.
Direct fuel injection reduces combustion temperatures, so the TU’s compression ratio was raised from 9.3:1 to 10.0:1 to maximize energy yield from the fuel.
The X5 M’s engine banks are run by a single Continental/Siemens computer on the fire wall, but tighter clearances under the M5’s hood required splitting the box in two and moving the computers onto the engine itself—right next to the catalytic converters, in fact—so water cooling is used to prevent meltdown of the now-Bosch-supplied brains. The exhaust pipes running down both sides of the flywheel housing are 3.1 inches in diameter, 0.4 inch bigger than the X5 M’s, with double-layer walls to help contain heat.
The 529-pound S63 TU (nine pounds lighter than the retired V-10) is about as photogenic as a box of eels, but, says the M divison’s lead engine man, Jürgen Poggel, “If it is not sexy, it is powerful, which is sexy.”
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