The 2025 BMW M5 Touring Is Absurd and Great: Review

Does any new automobile include extra baggage than the newest BMW M5? The identify carries with it the burden of big expectations, and in case you hadn’t heard, the brand new M5 merely carries an enormous weight—5,390 kilos for the sedan and 5,530 kilos for the Touring wagon. Lots of people have made up their minds about this automobile, they usually’re not followers.

So, it’s unattainable to enter this automobile with out expectations. The least I can do is strategy the M5 Touring with an open thoughts and decide it on its deserves. I’ll lower to the chase: The M5 Touring is good. And compromised.

As a fast refresher, the brand new M5 takes the earlier automobile’s system—twin-turbo V-8, eight-speed automated transmission, all-wheel drive—and provides hybridity to it. A 14.8-kilowatt-hour battery pack constructed into the ground powers a 194-horsepower electrical motor sandwiched between the engine and transmission. Whole output is 717 hp and 738 pound-feet of torque, whereas the all-electric driving vary is 25 miles.

Photograph by: Chris Perkins / Motor1

Photograph by: Chris Perkins / Motor1

Photograph by: Chris Perkins / Motor1

The M5 drives like a giant M3. BMW’s newest era of M vehicles have an excellent sharp entrance finish and splendidly impartial dealing with stability. I figured, given its weight and measurement, the M5 would really feel fairly totally different, however I used to be astonished at how comparable this factor felt. It’s agile in a manner it has no proper to be, and even at affordable street speeds, it’s very throttle-adjustable. I form of couldn’t consider it. 

On slender nation lanes, it nonetheless feels huge, after all, however get the M5 out on quicker, flowing roads and it comes into its personal. The grip is immense, and also you get a very good sense of what the automobile is doing by way of the seat of your pants. Even the steering is sweet, with a really pure weight buildup off-center that communicates what the massive entrance Pirellis are feeling. Braking is great, too, on these $8,500 carbon-ceramics, and the brake pedal is well-tuned to the purpose that you just don’t even comprehend it’s mixing friction and regenerative braking.

Photograph by: Chris Perkins / Motor1

Execs: Astonishing Dealing with, Highly effective, Effectively-Built-in Hybrid, Wagon Practicality / Cool-Issue

Then there’s the velocity. The electrical torque helps with transient response, and the engine likes to rev in typical BMW vogue. The dual-turbo 4.4-liter V-8 even sounds fairly tuneful with the eight-speed gearbox cracking off shifts with absolute smoothness and precision. At no level does the M5 really feel prefer it’ll cease accelerating both. Triple-digit speeds are all too straightforward right here.

However with the M5 Touring, you’ll be able to’t have your cake and eat it, too. The journey is agency, unbearably so at instances. BMW doesn’t use any fancy suspension tech right here—no adjustable anti-roll bars, air springs, or a completely energetic system like Porsche’s—simply metal springs and adaptive dampers. 

The damping is nicely judged, however there’s a lot spring and anti-roll bar right here to regulate the burden and make the M5 flip like something value a rattling. Even enlargement joints can ship a jolt by way of the cabin, and on New York Metropolis’s crumbling streets, the M5 is obvious uncomfortable.

On some stage, I can perceive why BMW tuned the M5 like this. The dealing with is astonishing for a automobile of this kind, and also you’re by no means in any doubt that you just’re in an M automobile. However on the identical time, shouldn’t an M5, of all issues, supply a mix of journey and dealing with? It’s a luxurious automobile that, within the case of the Touring, prices $127,675. And in fact, the lighter M3 rides higher. 

Photograph by: Chris Perkins / Motor1

Photograph by: Chris Perkins / Motor1

That’s about it for main faults, although. The one different criticism I’ve is that there are lots of drive modes to handle once you add within the 5 settings for the hybrid system on high of the standard customizations for steering, suspension, transmission, and so on. Oh, and the driving force’s seat on this tester was creaky after simply 9,000 miles of use.

The hybrid system can profit effectivity, too, regardless of this absolutely being one of many solely hybrids in the marketplace topic to a Fuel Guzzler tax. No less than within the form of driving I do, mixing Metro New York highways and metropolis streets, with a full battery and the decrease common speeds typical of the world, you’ll be able to exceed 30 miles per gallon. 

Even with a useless battery, I managed 28 mpg on a drive from Westchester again into Brooklyn. It’s no Prius, and in the event you’re driving tremendous arduous, utilizing the engine to cost the battery, it should drink gas prodigiously, nevertheless it’s far more environment friendly than I used to be anticipating.

Photograph by: Chris Perkins / Motor1

Cons: Extremely Agency Journey, Too Many Drive Modes, Want To Preserve Battery Charged For Respectable MPG

With time, I grew fonder of the M5 Touring. I believe it being a wagon helped, not simply due to the added practicality, however due to the incongruity of the factor. What an odd world we stay in, the place we’ve arrived at an infinite, 700-plus-hp BMW station wagon with bulging fender flares, a gaping maw, and a brilliant orange inside. 

It’s weird, and undeniably cool. On this shade of Isle of Man Inexperienced, the M5 Touring has critical presence, even making E63 Wagons and RS6 Avants look understated. It will get tons of constructive consideration, because it isn’t like the rest on the street. A lot of the hate this automobile will get on-line simply doesn’t translate to the actual world, the place individuals aren’t so fussed about spec sheets. There’s a magnetism right here—each time I get out of it, I look again at it.

Photograph by: Chris Perkins / Motor1

The journey high quality is a giant downside right here. It’s livable on nicer roads, however in the event you stay the place the roads are powerful, it’s an excessive amount of. However I discover myself falling in love with the M5 regardless of it. 

Nothing else is kind of so spectacular from an engineering standpoint, whereas additionally being downright goofy. An M5 that turns like an M3, a Fuel-Guzzling hybrid, a sensible station wagon that accelerates like a supercar, a efficiency automobile that weighs as a lot as a full-size pickup. It’s ridiculous and stylish.

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Supply: Chris Perkins / Motor1