BMW E39 M5

THE PERFECT FUSION OF ANALOGUE AND DIGITAL IN A SPORTING SEDAN? COME IN, RED LEADER

- Andy Enright

BMW CURRENTLY sells 28 different road car models with an M badge on the back, yet the first to carry any sort of Motorsport designation was the E12 530 MLE that rolled from the Rosslyn plant in South Africa back in 1976. In the intervening 44 years, the company has built many very good M cars but, I’d argue, only three truly great models: the E46 M3 CSL, the current M2, and the E39 M5.

It’s the M5 that might just be the most perfect archetype of the M genus. The raw ingredients are bewitching in their simplicity: a 4.9-liter normally aspirated V8 engine, a six-speed manual gearbox, and a rear-wheel drive. There are many reasons why this could be seen as the zenith of BMW’s M car development, but it’s the combination of conceptual purity and execution that distinguishes it.

Consider what came next. The E60 M5 was, by comparison, a bit of a tangle. We can argue back and forth on Chris Bangle’s styling for that car, and the same goes for the V10 powerplant, but the M division lost its nerve when it came to the fundamental way the M5 went down the road. The E39 offered an artfully polished chassis set-up from the factory. Good drivers instinctively knew how to get the best from it. The E60 M5 swamped the customer in choices because this was a vehicle with almost 600 permutations of gearshift method, power settings, shift speeds, suspension adjustments, and traction control thresholds.

The E39 M5 had a Sport button and the ability to disengage the Dynamic Stability Control (DSC). That’s it. And few bother pressing Sport because it oversharpens the throttle and adds unnecessary heft to the steering. The throttle and steering are artfully honed as they are.