BMW M5 prototype review

Flagship 5 Series has turned PHEV and promises to be BMW's most extreme super-saloon yet The G90-generation BMW M5 is the first M5 to stretch beyond five metres in length. And in terms of width? Compared with the already expansive 5 Series on which BMW’s latest super-saloon is based, the wheel arches are swollen by 75mm at the front and 48mm at the back.Had such a car been released three years ago, it wouldn’t have been an M5 but an M7 – the one product M division has never even attempted. As for weight, we will get to that topic in a moment, but it’s the most eye-widening statistic of them all.Yet if M division has made an art from anything in recent memory, it’s making chunky cars feel great to drive. Take the current M3 Competition. This big-nostrilled beast hogs more of the road than a 3 Series has any right to. It also weighs 100kg more than any of us were expecting. But so too is it a masterclass in exploitable handling.Anyone who tells you the M3 of the previous generation – usefully smaller and far lighter, sure – is a sweeter-handling car probably hasn’t experienced both. You would be a fool to bet against M division pulling off the same trick with this supersized, hybridised M5.Rewind to the Salzburgring in mid-May 2024 and our first chance to get a read on the hottest ever Fünfer. We have pre-series cars to try briefly and some engineers to talk to. As pre-series cars, rather than prototypes, these camoed cars are “95%” finished.It means there’s no going back in terms of hardware but there may yet be some calibration tweaks. For example, to the rear-axle steering – new to the M5 toy box – or the specific way in which the 196bhp electric motor between the 4.4-litre V8 engine and gearbox can pre-decelerate the crankshaft for faster upshifts or accelerate it for snappier downshifts. But in the main, this is it: your seventh-generation M5.