BMW M5 – Muscle Car of the New Millennium
BMW M5 – Muscle Car of the New Millennium.
The new BMW M5 is today’s equivalent of the muscle cars of the Sixties and Seventies! Looking much like any other BMW 5-Series save for a few tell-tale signs, the M5 goes like stink and roars like a deep-throated lion when pushed. It was truly a memorable experience for me to be able to get behind the steering wheel of one of the BMW M5’s, during its world launch in Munich, as a guest of BMW Malaysia. The timing was perfect, as the occasion coincided, (not by accident, I am sure) with the Oktoberfest, when beer is served in large tankards, and people don’t get home for days, too busy getting sloshed, or having a good time.
Not that we had much time to drink, as we had better things to do, like for instance, take a couple of hours to check out the M5 on a 3000 metre long, 60 metre wide military airfield (what one might say is a ‘safe’ environment) just so that all of us have a chance to hit the full 270 km/hr that the car can do. We are told it is some German automotive convention stipulating a top speed of not more than 250 km/hr that forces BMW to electronically limit the capabilities of the M5. For our press test, they actually bent the rules a little to give us the 20 km/hr extra.
Just picture this! With 507 horses on tap, and 550 Nm of torque just waiting to be unleashed, you sit beside two cones put along the runway, waiting for the car in front to get clear. “Please deactivate the DSC (Dynamic Stability Control), ” says the marshal at the starting cone. “Push the gear lever forward, past first gear, and hold it there,” he adds.
“Floor the throttle, hold it there, and release the gear lever when you are ready! The launch control will do everything else. You just keep your foot down, and hold the car in a straight line. Good luck, and have fun,” he says with a smile and a wink. You do exactly as he says, the engine revs up and holds steady at 4500 rpm. You release the gear lever, and all hell breaks loose! There is a loud ‘THUMP’ as the transmission takes hold, and the car leaps forward like a thoroughbred horse out of the starting box. The engine screams up to 8000 rpm in first gear, and there is another ‘THUMP’, just as loud as the first one as second gear takes hold. The thumps keep on coming every two or three seconds as the on-board electronics automatically engage each gear at the optimum shift point until you hit seventh gear and peak at 270 km/hr. I thought the gearbox would break with all the stress, but there we were, a whole bunch of wide-eyed, open-mouthed journalists, and about 50 of the M5’s, and not one of them had any problem.
The M5, with its V10, 5-litre engine, accelerates form zero to 100 km/hr in 4.7 seconds, and hits 200 km/hr in 14.7 seconds, an awesome feat for a production car. Much of the technology that went into the development is ‘borrowed’ from BMW’s F1 experience. The 7-speed gearbox was developed exclusively for the M5, with gear ratios cleverly matched to get the best out of the car. Weight, or rather the reduction of it, was an engineering exercise in itself, resulting in wide use of aluminum parts. The engine block itself is all aluminum, with steel inserts in the right places for strength. Without getting too technical, suffice to say that everything that would make the car a little faster, or a little more reliable or efficient, was taken into consideration in the development of the M5.
After that very exhilarating drive (with understanding gained as to why they prudently used the airfield), we were given ‘tulips’ that took us for a 250 kilometre drive on mixed terrain to a lakeside resort for the night, and back the next day. We had a chance to drive on stretches of Autobahn, country roads, and passed villages and towns. On the highways, the M5 blew just about everything else off; in the country roads, we learned just how agile it could be, and it was, believe me. Through the villages, it toodled along at modest speeds, and crawled when traffic was heavy, without so much as a whimper of a protest.
We have not been notified of the official selling price of the M5, and we doubt if any of them will be imported, unless someone puts in an official order and a large deposit. Our estimate is that it would be anything between RM1.2 to RM1.5 million. Any takers?
