BMW 520d What difference a driving mode makes
However good a car is, there’s often room for improvement
WHY WE’RE RUNNING IT
For more than 40 years, the BMW 5 Series has been the go-to executive saloon for those who enjoy driving. But is it also a great family car?
Sometimes you don’t realise how dependent on something you’ve become until it has gone. As I mentioned in my first report (Our Cars, 27 September), I ran a Volvo S90 before the 5 Series and, in most respects, this experience serves only to highlight how much better the BMW is in key areas. However, one thing I really miss about the Volvo is its head-up display.
BMW does, of course, offer one of these. It costs £225. But this box on the options list wasn’t ticked when our car was being ordered – a mistake that I’d urge anyone currently considering a 5 Series to avoid duplicating.
Having to look down at the instruments from time to time might not seem like that much of a hardship. However, in a car that’s as good at shutting out wind, road and engine noise as the latest 5 Series is, it’s actually all too easy for your speed to creep up between glances without you realising. And in the speed-camera-infested world in which we now live, that’s obviously a concern.
What makes it worse is the fact that the speedo isn’t particularly boldly marked in the 5 Series – when it’s being driven in Normal mode, at any rate – so checking how quickly you’re covering the ground actually requires a little more than a glance. But at least there’s a solution to this: switching to Sport mode not only turns the instruments red, but it also brings a large digital speed readout.
As a bonus, this Sport setting can be customised, allowing you to have the Sport instrument display but return the suspension, steering and engine to their more comfort-orientated settings if you wish.
Personally, I think the 5 Series is at its best when everything but the suspension is set to Sport. That way, it feels sharp and responsive, yet it glides across poorly surfaced roads and still keeps body roll well controlled in bends.
Unfortunately, there are still a couple of irritations, most significantly that you have to reselect Sport every time you start a new journey. Having gone to the trouble of setting up my preferences, I can’t help thinking that the car should then default to these.
The other issue is that the engine stop/start system doesn’t work when the car is in Sport, even if you return the engine itself to Normal mode. I’m not sure if this is actually costing me much in fuel economy, but I plan to test it in the coming weeks.
At the moment, with stop/start off most of the time, it’s averaging almost 45mpg, which I’m quite impressed with, given that my daily commute usually involves plenty of congested urban roads.
Meanwhile, the car will top 50mpg on long motorway runs without me really making a particular effort to drive efficiently.
Okay, these figures are no more than you’d expect from a modern diesel executive saloon. But they were put into perspective for me recently when I swapped into a plug-in hybrid SUV for a few days and averaged just 24.4mpg in similar conditions. Maybe we shouldn’t be so keen to jump out of our diesels after all, despite fears that they may be subject to additional charges in future.
As for the 5 Series, the next thing on the agenda is a family holiday in France. More on that in my next big update.