BMW 5 Series 2013 Review - International

Pilloried (and rightly so) for its ugliness, clumsy rear-end treatment and vague positioning, with this midlife facelift the 5 Series GT has been turned into something that actually looks like it belongs in a BMW catalogue. Its skin has been stretched, pulled, prodded and poked, its split tailgate has gone, its luggage capacity has been increased and it looks, well, nice-ish.

The mainstream 5 Series sedan and wagon haven’t been ignored but you’ll be hard pressed to spot the external changes. As exterior designer Won Kyu Kang explained: “We haven’t completely redesigned the BMW 5 Series -- we’ve just given its character a slightly sharper sporting edge.”

There are mechanical changes and BMW has added a fuel-sipping 518d to the bottom end of the range (a 105kW, Europe-only unit). Local performance fans will note the twin-turbo V8 has been tweaked at the top for more power. The M5 has been reworked, too.

BMW is joining Mercedes-Benz in mounting a serious assault on Audi’s all-wheel drive positioning with this latest 5, with 19 all-wheel-drive versions (in Europe at least) of one guise or another.

Yet, this facelift arrives only three years after the F10 model 5 Series arrived. It’s a very short cycle and BMW isn’t saying why.

Xenon headlights are now standard across the board, with adaptive LED lights arriving as an option for the first time. And the side indicator repeaters are now in the mirror housings. Both sedan and wagon get slim-line LED rear light strips.

Inside all three updated 5 Series family members have the latest iDrive system and a pair of fancy chromed plastic strips now flank a large, 10.25-inch multimedia screen.

It’s taken BMW years to play down perceptions that the iDrive was overly complicated and now it’s delivered the option of a touch pad on top of the knob (similar to Audi). Alas the character recognition systems seems infinitely slower to use than just twirling the knob.

As noted above, the GT gets bigger fiddles and needed them.

BMW insists the GT was always a success, exceeding its sales expectations and returning more profit than the rest of the 5 Series range. Anecdotal evidence suggested otherwise, as does a quick rescan of the quotes from the car’s launch in Portugal a couple of years ago.

BMW has moved the GT’s back seat forward by 30mm to enhance luggage capacity – BMW claims boot capacity has grown by 60 litres to 500. Deespite the change, the back seats still have 73mm of slide adjustment and the backrest angle can swing through 33 degrees.

The partition behind the seats follows them wherever you adjust them, so when you unlock the seats, you can bump the boot capacity to 650 litres without lowering them. Drop the 40:20:40 split fold set-up completely and you’ll find that increasing to 1700 litres -- even more than the Touring wagon.

Other than that, it still rides a little higher than its siblings to allow easier ingress and exit

The other big change to the 5 Series GT is that the complex, heavy, space-stealing two-piece tailgate is gone, replaced by a single unit that can be opened with the swipe of a foot beneath the bumper bar (a trick now standard across the 5 Series range).

The standard model 5 sedan and Touring demand the lion share of sales Down Under. Though we’ll need to wait until the cars arrive and full local specification is revealed, BMW insiders say standard equipment of Aussie 5s is in for a boost.

This is in a large part to counter Mercedes-Benz’s update of the E-Class. Locally, the latest E-Class boosted equipment levels, but more pointedly also delivered a step up in cabin quality and materials.

The luggage capacity of the 5 sedan and the wagon are unchanged (which leaves the sedan with its 520 litres of cargo capacity and the Touring with 560 litres), though they get larger centre console and cupholder areas.

There is also a 40:20:40 split fold rear seat in the Touring that can be dropped to deliver 1670 litres of luggage capacity.

The facelift will host four petrol and six diesel engines, so any 5 Series bodyshell you see might be playing host to 105 or 330kW. Add and M badge and that can rise to 423!

In the European lineup, the smallest of the petrol engines is the 520i’s 2.0-litre, turbo-charged four with direct injection, variable valve timing and variable valve lift. The largest is a 4.4-litre, twin-turbo V8.

BMW is also moving the 5 Series deeper into the land of the hybrid, with an update to its petrol-electric hybrid, called the ActiveHybrid sedan.

The M5 will remain mechanically identical but will get all of the 5 Series visual changes. We know… Break out the Bolly!

All of the engines have been bought up to the EU6 emissions standards and the EfficientDynamics program has been stretched to include a coasting function that lets the driveline spin free on any trailing throttle between 50-160km/h.

That feature joins BMW’s raft of existing efficiency fiddles, such as start-stop, a shift indicator for optimum efficiency and its Eco-Pro mode that tunes the engine, gear-shifting, steering, air conditioning and even the seat heaters for maximum efficiency.

Eco-Pro now also combines with the optional professional satnav package to determine the most fuel-efficient routes to where you’re bound.

BMW’s diesel engine range now uses an SCR-type catalytic converter, which injects urea to clean up emissions. The Bavarian premium maker now calls this system BluePerformance to make life ever more confusing in a world of BlueEffiency and BlueMotion.

The only all-new engine to the range is in the 518d -- essentially a detuned 2.0-litre, turbodiesel with 105kW and 360Nm. It’s hardly swift, with a 100km/h sprint of 9.6 seconds, thought it compensates with 4.5L/100km on the combined cycle. Don’t expect to see on sale Down Under.

BMW has improved the fuel efficiency of the 135kW, 2.0-litre turbodiesel so that it matches the 518D with 4.5L/100km, and that was enough of a reason to cull the 520d EfficientDynamics edition.

Another 50Nm has been extracted out of the 4.4-litre V8 so that it now has 300kW and 650Nm -- both of which were worthy M5 numbers not many years ago. It will be enough to move the 550i to 100km/h in 4.5 seconds, which, again, was M5 country only a decade ago, though the M5 never boasted a fuel economy number of 8.8L/100km.

Of the two cars we drove at the International launch, the 530d GranTurismo weighs 1940kg (a hefty 265kg heavier than the 1675kg 535i sedan) but still manages to post 5.8L/100km on the NEDC combined cycle.

It’s 190kW at 4000rpm and 560Nm at 1500rpm are good enough to hurl it to 100km/h in 6.2 seconds, though it tops out, at 246km/h, just shy of BMW’s traditional speed limiter.

The more conventional 535i sedan is more agile, faster and, obviously, thirstier, with its weight advantage no match for the diesel’s frugality. It records 8.0L/100km on the NEDC cycle, along with 186 grams of CO2/km. That actually rises to 8.2L/100km when you upgrade it from the standard 225/55 R17 tyres to the 18-inch wheels and tyres that pretty much everybody actually uses.

The tried and trusted inline six delivers 225kW at 5800rpm and 400Nm which help it to accelerate 0-100km/h in 5.8 seconds.

Sure, there are the usual suspects of the Mercedes-Benz E-Class and the Audi A6 range, plus side entries like the Jaguar XF and Lexus GS, too. Around the corner Maserati’s Ghibli is on the way.

But there are others, as the 6-Series GranCoupe shows. Mercedes-Benz’s CLS is one of those on the margins, providing essentially everything the E-Class provides but in a more individual, less conservative package. Audi’s A7 does the same thing

The once-unassailable position of the 5 Series and E-Class have also been assaulted from within from the likes of the X5 and the M-Class, plus everybody else’s premium SUVs as well.

Then there’s the 5 Series GT. It’s tough to say what the competitors are here. It’s an unashamedly comfortable thing to ride in, so you could consider it to be BMW’s MPV, except that it only moves the standard number of people.

Perhaps it is just something different to the norm – and a car that suits your lifestyle. At least now you can bear to look at it from the outside!

First, the once-ugly duckling. The 530d turns out to be a fine machine, much like its predecessor, but just a lot easier to look at.

The only real rethink BMW has given to the 5 Series suspension is that the dampers have been fiddled for more comfort and to try to reduce the body roll, plus it’s remapped the oft-criticized electric power steering.

This latter move was part of a chase for better steering precision, which the 530d GT doesn’t deliver unless it’s in Sport mode. That has its own compromises, because it sharpens the throttle response and makes the gearbox shift a bit snappier, hold gears for longer even under soft acceleration and downshifts more raucously.

In Comfort, which is otherwise closest to the rationale of the entire car, it’s too vague and wanders absent-mindedly at the behest of the road surface.

There are optional electronic dampers for both this and the sedan, and we consider these to be more or less compulsory. Otherwise you can only have the good Sports steering or the comfier ride and transmission setting you really want in Comfort, but not both together. Your call, but Audi’s Individual setup, which lets you mix and match as you see fit, is still far better.

It does just about everything else brilliantly in line with its visual promise. It has all the interior luxury and a touch more individuality than the 7 Series (on which it’s actually based), but offers considerably more practicality and versatility.

It’s quiet, it’s strong and it’s smooth and its 1940kg means its ride suffers fewer small bumps to intrude.

The 535i sedan feels more agile and loses little in its interior packaging, even if the GT delivers a more individual cabin feel. However, the 535i does do the typical 5 Series trick of delivering slightly less rear legroom than it looks like it should. If it’s too small, get the GT.

BMW’s inline six has lost none of its silkiness and none of its ability to spin an entrancing web with its rapid response, its utter lack of harshness and its wonderful high-rpm metallic hammer exhaust note.

It rides well enough most of the time, though it still delivers more than its share of vertical inputs that fall about halfway to being termed ‘jolts’. It’s clearly set up to be a firmer beast than an E-Class, but even Maserati’s new Ghibli is a more cosseting unit over broken ground.

The 5 sedan also suffers the same issue as the GT with its steering map. Comfort gives the steering all the direction of a teenager repeating Grade 11 for the fourth time, while Sport fixes that but only after stiffening the ride and making the powertrain more responsive than you might.

But they’re minor quibbles, really. BMW didn’t fix much on the 535i because there wasn’t much that needed fixing. It’s that simple. It has always been a quality piece of machinery and it remains that way.

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