BMW M5 Saloon and Touring review
BMW embraces hybrid tech, but keeps the V8, for its super-saloon icon Supercars and hypercars excepted, few breeds of modern performance car have undergone more technical change over the past 10 years than the super-saloon.There is clearly something about precisely what these cars represent, the role they play, the prices they command and the importance they assume for their manufacturers that has ushered them down the express lane towards technical progression more quickly than, say, hot hatchbacks, sports cars or fast grand tourers. And it’s to the seventh-generation version of one of the founding super-saloons – the BMW M5 – that we now turn. Technical change already characterises this car’s journey through the decades. From the third-generation E39 version, you can count off the various manifestations as ‘the V8 one’, ‘the V10 one’, ‘the turbo one’, ‘the four-wheel-drive one’ – and now the G90 will come to be thought of as ‘the hybrid one’.Then again, we already have plug-in hybrid and electric versions of the G60 5 Series on which this car is based. So it’s time to find out exactly what the adoption of a PHEV powertrain means for the M5 – on weighbridge, proving ground and highway, and for the legacy of one of the most revered fast BMWs there has ever been.
BMW embraces hybrid tech, but keeps the V8, for its super-saloon icon
Supercars and hypercars excepted, few breeds of modern performance car have undergone more technical change over the past 10 years than the super-saloon.There is clearly something about precisely what these cars represent, the role they play, the prices they command and the importance they assume for their manufacturers that has ushered them down the express lane towards technical progression more quickly than, say, hot hatchbacks, sports cars or fast grand tourers. And it’s to the seventh-generation version of one of the founding super-saloons – the BMW M5 – that we now turn. Technical change already characterises this car’s journey through the decades. From the third-generation E39 version, you can count off the various manifestations as ‘the V8 one’, ‘the V10 one’, ‘the turbo one’, ‘the four-wheel-drive one’ – and now the G90 will come to be thought of as ‘the hybrid one’.Then again, we already have plug-in hybrid and electric versions of the G60 5 Series on which this car is based. So it’s time to find out exactly what the adoption of a PHEV powertrain means for the M5 – on weighbridge, proving ground and highway, and for the legacy of one of the most revered fast BMWs there has ever been. 
