M5 RUS
September 9th, 2004, 13:14
For those who might be interested as we all car enthusiasts and we need to know our competition and rivals...
http://www.edmunds.com/reviews/roadtests/firstdrive/103035/article.html?tid=edmunds.h..wkedmunds.firstdrive.1 g.*
Another One: Bob Harper Autocar reviewer
More titbits.
Did I mention the noise? Best soundtrack of any car, ever! Goes through so many different vocal planes that it's impossible to describe. It wails and howls and bellows on its way up to its pure F1 noise at the top of the rev range.
Noticable step in power delivery just before 6000rpm. Every time you red-line it and flick up to the next cog you're bang slap right in the middle of the sweet spot. Super fast, even in 400bhp mode. However, slip it into P500 Sport (have to use iDrive or pre-program the M-Drive button) and it's quite simply the fastest thing I've ever driven.
It sounds like the HUD was faulty on the edmunds car - the one in mine worked a treat!
'Our' test car was Interlagos - not a bad colour, but it's got a tad too much purple in it for my taste.
The chassis's great. There is a whiff of understeer in slower corners, but that's expected with something that weights the best part of two tonnes. In medium and high speed bends the grip is awesome, and BMW's claims that it'll pull over 1g are entirely believable.
Brakes are mighty powerful, although there is a bit of grumble from them after you've used them heavily, but this affects just about every car with drilled discs.
SMG works a treat, although it's a real bang bang on upshifts in S5 and S6 modes, especially if you don't lift. S4 is proably the best compromise - still very fast cahnges, but with a little more comfort. Not all that keen on SMG auto mode - prefer to do it myself.
In sequential there's a 'kickdown' point on the throttle where it will drop down the perfect number of ratios to get maximum attack acceleration - very useful for picking off dawdling German holiday makers. As always the way it blips the throttle everytime you want to downchange is just marvellous, and I don't think I'd ever tire of flicking up and down the box!
Economy isn't its strong point, but you wouldn't expect it to be would you! We saw a worst of 9mpg, a best of 18, and an average of 13mpg.
It's brilliantly stable on the Autobahn. You can sit at an indicated 270km/h all day long with really not a huge amount of windnoise, and its aggressive front end gets traffic moving out of your way like Moses parting the Red sea.
It would still be nice to have a manual, but BMW's so wrapped up in the F1 tie up that I can't see it happening. The way the cogs are arranged in the seven speed it would be impossible to make this box a manual.
Overall though, a brilliant piece of kit.
Cheers
Bob
http://www.edmunds.com/reviews/roadtests/firstdrive/103035/article.html?tid=edmunds.h..wkedmunds.firstdrive.1 g.*
Another One: Bob Harper Autocar reviewer
More titbits.
Did I mention the noise? Best soundtrack of any car, ever! Goes through so many different vocal planes that it's impossible to describe. It wails and howls and bellows on its way up to its pure F1 noise at the top of the rev range.
Noticable step in power delivery just before 6000rpm. Every time you red-line it and flick up to the next cog you're bang slap right in the middle of the sweet spot. Super fast, even in 400bhp mode. However, slip it into P500 Sport (have to use iDrive or pre-program the M-Drive button) and it's quite simply the fastest thing I've ever driven.
It sounds like the HUD was faulty on the edmunds car - the one in mine worked a treat!
'Our' test car was Interlagos - not a bad colour, but it's got a tad too much purple in it for my taste.
The chassis's great. There is a whiff of understeer in slower corners, but that's expected with something that weights the best part of two tonnes. In medium and high speed bends the grip is awesome, and BMW's claims that it'll pull over 1g are entirely believable.
Brakes are mighty powerful, although there is a bit of grumble from them after you've used them heavily, but this affects just about every car with drilled discs.
SMG works a treat, although it's a real bang bang on upshifts in S5 and S6 modes, especially if you don't lift. S4 is proably the best compromise - still very fast cahnges, but with a little more comfort. Not all that keen on SMG auto mode - prefer to do it myself.
In sequential there's a 'kickdown' point on the throttle where it will drop down the perfect number of ratios to get maximum attack acceleration - very useful for picking off dawdling German holiday makers. As always the way it blips the throttle everytime you want to downchange is just marvellous, and I don't think I'd ever tire of flicking up and down the box!
Economy isn't its strong point, but you wouldn't expect it to be would you! We saw a worst of 9mpg, a best of 18, and an average of 13mpg.
It's brilliantly stable on the Autobahn. You can sit at an indicated 270km/h all day long with really not a huge amount of windnoise, and its aggressive front end gets traffic moving out of your way like Moses parting the Red sea.
It would still be nice to have a manual, but BMW's so wrapped up in the F1 tie up that I can't see it happening. The way the cogs are arranged in the seven speed it would be impossible to make this box a manual.
Overall though, a brilliant piece of kit.
Cheers
Bob