Car: BMW 5-Series range
Prices: £27,465-£68,495 - on the road INSURANCE GROUPS: 16-20
Emissions: 136-274g/km
Performance: [530i] 0-60mph 6.1s / Max Speed 155mph
Fuel Consumption: [530d] (combined) 44.1mpg
Safety: Twin front, side & window airbags / ABS / DSC
Dimensions: [4dr] Length/Width/Height 4841/1846/1468mm
FIVE STAR TREATMENT
Our Rating: 7.4 / 10
Just as the E60 generation of the 5 Series starts to get a bit easier on the eye, BMW has gone and updated it. Andy Enright reports…
Hindsight is a perk not afforded to road testers. When BMW’s E60 generation 5 Series was launched in 2003, and I’ll level with you here, most of us thought it was way too radical to succeed. It looked like nothing else on sale and many commentators thought that the flame-surfaced styling and jarring lines just flat didn’t work. Fast forward three years and it’s hard to think of another executive car that looks better. The Audi A6 and the Mercedes E-Class certainly don’t rival the 5 Series in the styling department. Perhaps Chris Bangle, the man behind this ‘design language’, was right. He certainly took the flack well from a largely conservative press.
It turns out we were wrong to scoff at his penmanship. After a faltering start, 5 Series sales lit the burners and took off, 2006 marking a record year with 19,600 cars sold. Recently, there’s been a visual tweak to the range, improvements to the engines and the introduction of a Touring version of the M5 to keep things ticking over.
In most classes of car, the gap between the best and the next best isn’t actually that great. Not here. If you’re a serious driver, the BMW 5 Series takes all of its key rivals out back and gives them a good shoeing. Mercedes E-Class? Too soft. Audi A6? Too big and too vague. Jaguar S-TYPE? Poor consistency of control weights. Lexus GS? Next! Taken in isolation, any of these cars would seem like a good steer. Drive one back to back with a 5 Series and you see where the expertise lies in the chassis development, where BMW has leaned on its competition heritage, where those weeks pounding round the Nurburgring have paid dividends.
BMW has introduced a regenerative braking system that uses the engine deceleration under braking to charge the battery. This means that the alternator has less to do in normal driving conditions which, in turn, means a reduction in fuel consumption and emissions of around 7 per cent. All nine engines in the 5 Series range have been revised to offer better power and economy, while a revised six-speed auto ‘box has also been introduced. Buyers of 550i, 540i, 530i, 535d and 530d models can opt for the Automatic Sports Transmission which has wheel-mounted paddles for even sharper changes.
The once radical shape of the 5 Series has now matured nicely into a discreet but smart piece of design. In a bid to keep things fresh, BMW has made a few small changes to the latest car. At the front, the headlights and indicators are now clear glass while the kidney grille sits flush with the bumper. The air duct in the rear valance has been revised while the side sill gets an additional contour line and horizontal LEDs are used in the rear light cluster. Inside, the door panels and window switches have been redesigned and there’s now eight freely programmable ‘favourites’ buttons on the dashboard so that drivers don’t have to use the infernal iDrive control system quite so much. There’s also an optional Lane Departure warning system offered.
The 5 Series remains a big but not bulky car. The saloon gets decent space up front with slightly below average rear leg room and a 520-litre boot. Measuring 4.48m in length, the Touring estate features a 535-litre load capacity with the 60/40 split folding rear seats in place and a hefty 1,650 litres with the seats folded down. There’s also a split bootlid with the rear window opening separately for the easy loading of small items. Customers can also opt for a fully-automatic tailgate operation with a press on the key fob opening the hatch and simultaneously retracting the boot load cover.
The basic model line up doesn’t look a whole lot different these days but there are subtle improvements right across the range. Power outputs have been teased upwards, examples being the 523i that now makes 190bhp (up 13bhp on its predecessor), the 535d which is now good for 286bhp (up 14bhp), the 525d that’s now packing 197bhp (up a hefty 20bhp) and the 520d that now offers 177bhp (up from 163bhp). Prices start at just under £28,000 for the 520d SE and head north in the mainstream range to just over £50,000 for the 550i M Sport Touring.
Mainstream isn’t enough for some customers, however, and they’ll want the M treatment. The M5 salo
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