BMW M5 Touring (G99) review

You need to select 4WD Sport, which favours the rear axle without abandoning the front altogether, before the M5 Touring starts to feel adjustable under power. In that mode you do feel the poise and balance that we expect of a BMW M-car; despite the weight this isn’t just some lumpen, flat-footed brute with more power than it knows what to do with. In 2WD mode, though, which also disables the stability and traction control systems, you find yourself treating the throttle pedal with the care and delicacy of a watchmaker. The rear contact patches don’t offer much warning when they’re about to cry enough, and when they do, the power tends to flow that way very quickly indeed. Suddenly you find you’re really rather busy, busier indeed than you expected or wanted to be. At which point you switch hurriedly back to 4WD Sport.

The big V8 goes hard all the way to the redline like an M engine should and it sounds good too, at least until you disable the sound augmentation. Without it, the soundtrack is strangely tinny. In the lower reaches and through the mid-range the burly electric motor that lives inside the transmission gives instant throttle response and forceful acceleration. Yes, the hybrid adds a huge amount of weight, but it does good work too. The eight-speed auto, meanwhile, works brilliantly whether in manual mode or left to its own devices.

So far, so M5 saloon. The key differences from a dynamic point of view are the Touring’s slightly more compliant ride and the greater sense of heft once the road becomes uneven and starts to undulate. For the most part this car hides its weight remarkably well, but when the road rises and falls and the body goes light momentarily or squats down hard on its springs, you’re suddenly very aware of all the mass shifting around behind you.

That’s where the Touring feels different to the saloon. But in one other sense the two variants are just the same: for all their crushing performance and capability, there isn’t a great deal of pure driving fun to be had in either. These are cars you admire more than adore; you respect them more than you relish every moment at their wheel.

But maybe, depending on where you live, you can have your cake and eat it. Scale down from an M5 to an M3 and you can still have a practical car with room for five, and you can still choose between a saloon and an estate, but you’ll have infinitely more fun. I drove the recently facelifted four-door M3 on the same launch event, a basic model with a manual gearbox and no four-wheel drive hardware, and found it to be all the modern M-car I could ever want. It was lighter than its bigger sibling by more than 700kg, and felt every gramme of it

This particular car had the most supple ride of any recent M3 I’ve driven (though still busier than a new M5’s) and it steered beautifully. It still went plenty hard enough but it sounded better than the M5, its straight-six soundtrack sweeter and more authentic than that synthesised V8 rumble. Body control on the same undulating road was exceptional and its six-speed manual gearshift was very good too. But the most wonderful thing about the M3 was that it was engaging and interactive in a way the M5 couldn’t hope to be. I had a blast threading that thing along Bavarian back roads – it’s the best modern M-car by a distance.

But we don’t get it in the UK. Only the more expensive and more powerful M3 Competition is available here, and that’s not offered with a manual transmission. BMW UK says buyers on these shores just choose the Competition anyway, so it’s not worth bringing the entry-level model in too. That might make good business sense, but it means British buyers are being denied the most desirable M car BMW currently builds. I have no doubt at all that the UK importer could bring in a limited number of manual M3s, sell them at the same price as the M3 Competition and have an instant classic on its hands.

But back to the M5 Touring. You can, and should, question the wisdom of adding several hundred kilograms of weight to a car by installing a hybrid system in the name of efficiency, but the current CO2 emissions-based tax systems reward car makers for doing so. For a great many buyers, this new M5 will be a much more affordable car than the last one. The Touring has baked-in compromises of its own, but they’re only felt at the extremes. If you’ve been waiting years for BMW to finally build another estate-bodied M5, those compromises are nothing like significant enough to compel you to consider the saloon instead.

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