BMW M5 engines & performance

For the first time in an M5, pressing the start button elicits not an engine firing up but a friendly bong to tell you the drive system is ready. When you put it in Drive and squeeze the accelerator, the car moves off on electric power because that’s the default setting. The ability to glide noiselessly through town and complete uninteresting journeys on electric power is certainly an asset, but part of the appeal of a car with a special engine is to make those journeys a bit more interesting. There is something odd about having a super-saloon that feels a bit wheezy until the engine kicks in.

It’s solved easily by changing into the Dynamic hybrid mode, which keeps the engine on all the time and makes sure the battery never runs out, but then you start to wonder why you’re carting 150kg of battery around.

When you’re in electric mode, the sound system pipes in a noise that’s reminiscent of a V8 but isn’t exactly fake V8 noise. I should hate it, and you can probably turn it off somewhere in the myriad settings, but because it’s quite subtle and not trying to exactly imitate an engine, I left it on.

Illya Verpraet

Road Tester

Configured as such, it becomes plain exactly what the electrification is contributing: it’s not so much standing starts as it is unreal mid-range punch: any gear, any revs, any speed and this M5 goes. This gives you options: you can leave the gearbox in fifth and surf on a burbling wave of torque, or gear down and rev the engine to 7200rpm, letting it do its best E92 M3 V8 impression in the process. It doesn’t matter much for cross-country pace, so you can explore the engine’s different characters. I’m sure some of the sound is digitally augmented, but not obviously so: it sounded good to me.