BMW 5 Series 2010 Review - International

BMW 5 Series

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The 5 Series is the one model BMW says sets the pace for everything it does and, every seven or eight years, its bigwigs hold their breath to see how the world reacts to a new one.

This year, BMW will be doing more breath-holding than normal, because its all-new 5 has arrived with not just a far stiffer body, a longer cabin and lower emissions, but presents as the least sporty 5 Series the company has ever offered.

It will still be fast and strong in a straight line -- with the range-topping, turbocharged V8  bursting to 100km/h in 5.0 seconds -- but BMW admits it has deliberately turned its own epitome of the sports sedan into a more-luxurious machine than ever before.

While the new 5 will launch in Europe with four petrol and two diesel powerplants, BMW only had the turbo-powered 535i petrol and 530d turbo-diesel straight sixes for us to test in Portugal this week. With their eight-speed automatic transmissions, both cars are cleaner and faster than their predecessors and while the new model shares a lot of its parts with the 5 Series GT, it was the 5 sedan that was developed first.

Once the darling of those who refused to feel old, the new 5 has grown up... It's become a very mature car and it has none of the fidgety ride and buzzing steering liveliness of its predecessor.

Project Director, Josef Wüst, admitted that BMW has turned the 5 Series into a softer beast, insisting that it gives more comfort in its standard setups, but can behave like a sports sedan at the flick of its Sport or Sport+ dynamic suspension buttons.

"And it's deceptive, really. A lot of the difference in steering is because the chassis is now 55 per cent stiffer, so that means a lot of the vibrations from the road aren't coming through to the steering anymore," Wüst said.

"It can be driven as fast or faster than before; it's just that it does it with less fuss and more comfort."

That won't please everybody, but BMW has a mid-term [sporting] fix coming for the disaffected few. In the meantime, the 5 Series is a bit of a slow burn; becoming more and more convincing with more and more miles.

While the body is 40mm longer than the old model's, the wheelbase is stretched 80mm -- meaning it gets even shorter overhangs and more room inside. That feeling of space is helped by a short dashboard, though it does feel quite high.

In a nice change of pace, there are plenty of useful spots to store things up front, including cupholders and a holder for the proximity key, plus a big centre console which holds the USB connectors for iPods and other MP3 gadgetry.

There is more rear-seat legroom and headroom, too, and it's clear that the 5 Series is being pitched as a closer match to the Benz E-Class than ever before.

That feeling comes out in the utterly fuss-free way in which the 535i covers ground. While it can sprint to 100km/h in 6.0 seconds, that never feels like what it wants you to do. Rather, it wants you to carry speed through corners without ever feeling as though you've approached its limits. It wants you to caress it around town, dipping into its 400Nm reserve of torque. It would prefer that the gearbox took charge of the acceleration for you before you tapped its 225kW of power.

And it can gather pace either way, quite comfortably. Left to its own devices, with the tricky steering-gearbox-throttle-suspension adjustment doo-dad in Normal, it'll happily slip up the cogs at middling revs in near silence. Then, when you stand on the throttle, it'll leap ahead with the silence giving way to a gruff howl beyond 4000rpm.

And the petrol six-powered sedan does all this while posting CO2 emissions just under 200g/km and returning 8.5L/100km on the average cycle.

It's a very good car, but it's just not in the same league as the 530d. It's everything the petrol turbo is, but stronger, cleaner and even easier to coax whatever speed you want from it.

The 3.0-litre turbodiesel six pushes out less power, with 180kW, but much more torque -- 540Nm. It makes all the difference, with the heavier diesel following only slightly behind on acceleration (6.3 to 100km/h), but belting the 535i on economy. Even with all of this performance, it still manages 6.2L/100km and 160 grams of CO2.

That would be sufficiently convincing for some, but the 530d engine is also much, much more suited to the 5 Series' new-found adult character. It's just always there, always willing and always strong, even when it's pulling just 1300rpm at 100km/h.

It's smooth, too. The cabin might experience around 10 per cent more vibration [than the petrol] at idle, but this feels like it drops to around five per cent more under normal driving. It's a hell of a trade off.

The move to proper adulthood has happened below decks, even if the interior is now much more aligned to being useful and comfortable everyday for everyday people. Besides the new chassis, there is a new rear suspension, complete with rear-wheel steering, and a new front suspension as well. BMW claims the rear-steer effectively shortens the wheelbase at low speed, but lengthens it at high speed to add stability. And that's how it feels.

On our first 500km in the 5, it left us struggling to imagine how you'd ever crash one, because it's just so secure, so stable and so effective at covering ground. It's completely fuss free and the electric steering (though still not completely intuitive) suffers few vibrations and lets you just turn in to a bend, hold the line without moving the wheel, then turn out again. And it carries deceptive pace while it does it.

It has the softest, smoothest transition from one cornering stance to another on a direction change of any large car I can remember. It's like it's always doing it easy even when, on the Estoril racetrack, it had been pushed beyond its limits of grip.

Not just that, but the car's Comfort mode, once the sole haven of Americans and old sea captains, is actually useful in soaking up bumps; the Normal mode is still the one to have and the Sport mode is now a strictly temporary affair.

On the first day's roads, it left the nagging feeling that, perhaps, the ideal setting was somewhere between Normal and Sport, but the second day's blacktop eradicated that suspicion.

We'll bring you a full launch review from Portugal in the coming weeks, but for the moment we can confirm this is the most complete 5 Series in history, especially in the 530d specification. It really does feel like few cars in the world will be able to live with it as a mile-eater, par excellence.

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