New BMW M5 officially revealed

BMW has lifted the official lid on its all-new M5 super-sedan 24 hours early after images were leaked across the internet yesterday, following a teaser campaign and our first prototype drive in May.

Yes, BMW M’s main sports sedan weapon is back, packing a 3.4-second sprint to 100km/h to hurl itself back into the fray against Mercedes-AMG, Audi Sport and Jaguar SVO.

Blasted out of the front lines of the sports sedan race by AMG’s E 63 and Audi Sport’s RS 6 and RS 7, the overweight, under-gripped current M5 has given way to a sixth-generation, all-wheel drive rocket capable of 305km/h.

The biturbo 4.4-litre V8 engine has been significantly upgraded, but it’s the switch to all-wheel drive – a move BMW once insisted would never, ever happen with M’s core models – that looks set to steal the show.

Besides slashing a second from the 100km/h sprint time of the outgoing M5, the new model now blasts out to 200km/h in 11.1 seconds and is officially limited to 250km/h, though that can be raised to a full 305km/h with the Driver’s Package.

While it always fires up in all-wheel drive, the fully active layout means the driver can switch it into rear-wheel drive at will, and its skid-control system can also still be fully disengaged, meaning the M5 can be drifted as long as the driver’s skill and tyre budget lasts.

Even in AWD form; the M5 only brings its front tyres into play when the rear tyres have exceeded their longitudinal traction limits, using a system that combines the xDrive active AWD centre differential and an active M Differential on the rear axle.

The drivetrain’s rigidity techniques have been reinforced to cope with the extra torque, especially when the car switches to rear-wheel drive mode.

M claims the 4.4-litre V8 engine is heavily revised and “now more potent than ever”, but it reads like it’s been lightly revised and has the same 441kW power output as the outgoing F10 M5’s strongest version.

The power peak arrives between 5600 and 6700rpm, while the 750Nm torque peak hits at 1800rpm and sticks around until 5600rpm, so there’s complete performance curve overlap on the spec chart.

There’s another 70Nm of torque on offer from the stock versions of the F10 M5, though.

The changes to the powerplant include a boost to fuel injection pressure to lift it to 350 bar, delivering shorter injection times and M claims that’s better for atomisation of the fuel and better for throttle response.

That said, it continues with an 88.3mm bore and an 89mm stroke, giving it a swept capacity of 4395cc, but what sets it apart, still, is the way it funnels its exhaust gases out of the combustion chambers.

It retains the outgoing car’s cross-bank exhaust manifolds, which make better use of the exhaust gas to spin up the turbochargers than the usual system, plus there’s now a Helmholtz resonator between the dual-branch exhaust system’s two silencers to lower weight.

It now uses indirect intercooling and it has picked up a small front oil sump in the oil pan to go with its electronically controlled oil supply system.

For all that performance, reaching from 100km/h to 200km/h in just 7.7 seconds, it still uses 10.5L/100km on the NEDC combined cycle, for 241g/km of CO2. That’s just on half a litre worse than the outgoing car, and that’s largely down to the all-wheel drive system.

Despite that, the new M5 weighs less than the old one, which was admittedly one of the heavyweights in the field. The new car uses an aluminium bonnet and a carbon-fibre roof to pull the weight down to 1855kg, or 1930kg on the EU standard, which tacks on 75kg to account for a driver’s weight.

Still, that’s only light in comparison to the outgoing F10 M5, which launched fat and never made a significant effort to shed mass. The first E28 M5 in 1989 weighed less than 1500kg and every M5 has added weight at each generational change except this one.

It has also ditched the dual-clutch transmission in favour of an eight-speed automatic, capable of both smooth, cruising shifts and paddle- or gear lever-shifted manual gear changes.

Like most M cars, the M5 is wider in the wheel-arches than the standard version of the car and it still occupies 4965mm of road length and 1903mm of width. Critically, it’s 2126mm from mirror tip to mirror tip, making for a 5.0x2.1-metre box.

It’s 1473mm high, too, but the more important stats are that the wheelbase is 2982mm and the front and rear tracks are 1626mm and 1595mm.

The grip potential isn’t just helped by the enormous footprint but a stiffened body structure at both ends, including strut tower-to-bulkhead stiffening and tower-to-front struts at the front-end.

A key change is that the unloved, wooden, slow hydraulic steering has been replaced by an electro-hydraulic steering system and, thankfully, it’s hard to imagine it being any less appropriate for a high-performance car than the outgoing system.

The rear-end is modified from the standard 5-Series’ five-link system, but takes on new toe links and more rigid rubber mounts, plus elastomer bearings, stiffer anti-roll bars and stronger lower wishbones. There is also a steel X-brace beneath the rear bodywork, plus a transverse aluminium strut.

Inside, the M5 runs to a head-up display and its rather cluttered steering wheel has M1 and M2 buttons to give the drivers easy access to their customised engine, transmission, suspension and skid-control modes.

The standard anchors are compound steel, with blue-painted six-piston fixed callipers on the front and single-piston floaters on the rear. They can be upgraded to carbon-ceramic units at the touch of a credit card, saving another 23kg.

There is a new front bumper and apron area, designed to feed cooling air into the brakes and the engine’s intercoolers and radiator, while there is a diffuser in the rear, flanked by four exhaust pipes, which retain their flap control to make them louder on demand.

The standard tyres ride on 9.5 x 19-inch front and 10.5 x 19-inch rear wheels, measuring out to 275/40 R19 front and 245/40 R19 rear tyres, though most people will plump for the optional 20-inch rubber. The larger tyres rate at 275/35 R20 and 285/35 R20 instead.

In Europe, the new BMW M5 can be ordered from September before production starts in November and first deliveries take place early next year.

Scheduled for launch on the same sales start date as the standard M5 is the BMW M5 First Edition. This special-edition version – limited to a run of 400 examples worldwide – has BMW Individual Frozen Dark Red Metallic paintwork, is exclusively appointed and costs an extra €19,500 over the standard model.

Local M5 pricing and specifications are yet to be revealed and at this stage it’s not clear if Australians will have access to the First Edition (pictured here in red).

However, the new M5 will arrive in Aussie showrooms in March or April next year and, although the outgoing model was last priced from under $185,000, expect its replacement’s price tag to be closer to that of its chief protagonist, the E 63 (from $209,611).