FINE TUNING 2024'S MOST WANTED

Fine-tuning 2024's most wanted. The first M5 Touring since the wild V10 E61 is hotly anticipated. We join M's hard-charging Engineering Chief Dirk Häcker during development

- Ben Barry

FOUR AND A HALF YEARS AGO, BMW M HEAD of Engineering Dirk Häcker and M's senior team had to make a tough call. They were plotting the next M5 and second guessing where both legislation and customer mindsets might shift to, not just half a decade hence, but throughout the next model's life-cycle.

'We were unsure if a V8 alone would still be possible but we also felt it was too early for a full electric M5,' explains Häcker.

'So, we decided on a plug-in hybrid for extra performance with real electric range.' It was one of the biggest decisions in a career that began with BMW in 1998 and has taken in chassis development, overall vehicle sign-off, and even driver training before Frank van Meel, newly appointed boss of M division and an old friend, came calling in 2015.

At one point during M5 development, the M3 and M4's sixcylinder S58 engine was a contender to replace the V8, given hybrid performance could easily fill any shortfall.

"The six is very powerful as well as lighter, but, ultimately, we decided it was important to keep the V8 emotion,' Häcker explains. Now we are very happy because the ramp-up to electrification has been, maybe, slower than expected.' Not everyone is happy, mind, mostly because M's cake-andeat-it solution sees weight spiral to about 2,500 kilograms, depending upon exactly how much spec-cake that particular M5 has eaten, plus, of course, the Touring is heavier again, by a further 40 kg. It is hard to imagine that kind of mass doing the tricks we expect M cars to do.

After a brief drive on track recently in the saloon, we are in Wales to test both a dynamically representative if camouflaged Ggo saloon and swap straight into a not-quite-ready G99 M5 Touring, ahead of production in November-it is the first since the Vio Touring of the 2000s and the first-ever M estate to head Stateside (a fact which swung the business case).