Compromise has never felt this good
Turbocharged engine boasts 560 horsepower
It may be hard to believe, but BMW’s latest M5 is compromised. The part about said compromise that is hard to believe is that the company’s top-ranking performance sedan boasts 560 horsepower. That’s a stupefying number in any automobile, almost alarming in something that purports to do double duty transporting kids and grannies on local errands.
But still there is compromise. If BMW was completely unfettered, I suspect this M5 would have more pistons than the eight it boasts.
The company, if you’ve been reading anything auto-related of late, is in the midst of converting all of its cars to turbocharged engines, the idea being that they can generate as much horsepower as the larger normally aspirated engines they replace, but with the fuel economy governments demand.
Without that mandated miserliness, we may well have seen a V-12 in this latest rendition of the iconic M5. After all, it had already grown from an in-line six through a V-8 to the latest screaming V-10; it would hardly be a huge leap of technology to add two more pistons.
So, from that perspective (and that alone), the new M5 is a disappointment.
The engine revs to but a smidgen above 7,000 r.p.m. and, really, there’s not much need, even in the most dire of circumstances, for more than 6,000.
At that speed, it sounds like a regular throaty V-8, burbling muscularly. Impressive, yes, but not the hair-raising shriek of the previous V-10.
What might be hair-raising — especially if one were trying to emulate my closed-course shenanigans on public roads — is the alarming alacrity those 6,000 r.p.m. bring.
Besides those 560 ponies, there’s also 500 pound-feet of torque and, between the two, it seems the twin-turbocharged 4.4-litre eight can seriously warp the time/speed continuum.
BMW claims a zero-to100-kilometres-an-hour time of 4.3 seconds.
Like every turbocharged engine blowing great heaps of psi (21.8 in all), it feels relentless.
You shift because you think it might blow up, not because it stops pulling.
But the M5 has always been about more than just straight-line speed.
For most of its early life, the engine was just a support system for the car’s delicious handling. The 2012 model does not disappoint. The tires are massive, the suspension firm (if it’s set to Sport) and the brakes look like they’d stop a bus.
The only fly in the ointment, of course, is that the M5 is a sedan and a fairly hefty one at 1,990 kilograms.
As is, the 2012 edition of the M5 still does what its predecessors have always so magically done: Nothing with four doors offers so much performance with so much civility.
There are now more rivals for its throne, but there is just one king and it wears a BMW badge.
You shift because you think it might blow up,
not because it stops pulling.