I worked today with a young naked girl whom we shall call Teri. She wasn’t
actually naked but such was the smallness of her clothing you could tell she
wanted to be.
Teri wasn’t a model. She was absolutely adamant about that. “I’m not a model,”
she said. “I’m a television presenter.” And proceeded to reel off a list of
her shows, all of which are beamed only into homes with satellite dishes the
size of New Mexico.
Teri was one of the most annoying people I’ve ever met because at no point in
the day did she do or say anything even remotely surprising. From the moment
you saw her hair, you could tell where she lived, what her friends looked
like and that she almost certainly has the News of the World’s newsdesk on
speed dial.
It’s the same deal with those thin-lipped angry-looking women you see in Caffe
Nero reading The Guardian. You know everything about them before even saying
hello. And then there was the berk in the Boxster that cruised past me in
Docklands last week. I saw the parting in his hair and knew he’d have a
plasma television, an appointment to play squash that night with someone
called Dom, and no carpets.
Don’t these people realise that it’s much more fun to pick and mix opinions
rather than buying a sort of compilation album. It’s why I’m so supportive
of the European Union and have donkeys. Because these are the last things
anyone would expect.
And it’s also why I have such a downer on BMWs. Sure they’re great cars but
they’re like magnolia paint. It’s warm and practical and goes with anything
but what it says most of all is I Have No Imagination.
The M5, however, has always been a little bit different. The best was the
first. Launched in the late 1980s it looked exactly like my dad’s dreary
525e, but thanks to its 286bhp straight-six engine it went with a ferocity
and a panache that had no place in a four-door saloon.
It was, quite simply, the best Q car ever made (it looks ordinary but goes
like a rat up your trousers).
That said, the M5s that followed were fairly stupendous as well. Quiet,
unassuming cars for people who wanted to get home very quickly without
making a song and dance about it. And here’s the clincher. These cars lost
money like gin palaces, halving in value overnight and then halving again
before breakfast was over.
So whenever I see someone in an M5 I’m overcome with a wave of respect,
because here is someone who has paid a fortune to hide his light under a
bushel. I like that, and as a result I was desperately looking forward to my
first go in the new model.
It has a 5 litre V10 engine that churns out 400bhp. It’ll do 0-60 in 4sec and
could, if it didn’t have an electronic Bill Oddie under the bonnet, hit
204mph. And yet, apart from a few fancy air ducts on the front it looks
pretty much identical to your doctor’s normal 5-series. Sounds like quite a
recipe.
Unfortunately, however, the recipe has been spoilt somewhat by someone who
thinks pure engineering can be improved with a blizzard of technobabble.
So before setting off for a 50-mile journey home on a lovely summer’s evening,
I had to choose from 11 different settings on the seven-speed flappy paddle
gearbox. Then I had to decide how ferocious I wanted the gearshifts to be,
very fierce, quite fierce, moderately fierce, boring or very boring. And
then I had to choose from three settings on the electronic differential.
And then, since I didn’t know where I was, I had to set the sat nav, which
meant hitting a knob, twiddling it, moving it to the side and then twiddling
it again.
It’s a good job this car has so much power because by the time you’ve set it
up for the journey that lies ahead you’re already very late.
Anyway, off I toddled, cursing the BMW gearbox’s inability to cope with town
traffic no matter what setting you choose. Pretty soon, however, the road
opened up, Bob Seger came on the radio, and with a determined shove I put my
foot down.
And pushed a knob on the steering wheel that I assumed controlled the volume.
It didn’t. It changed the station, so now instead of Hollywood Nights I had
some fat opera bint warbling on Radio 3. Damn. So I had to get the screen
out of sat nav mode into entertainment mode and then tell it I wanted an FM
station, whereupon it presented me with a million local alternatives that
nobody who has £61,000 to spend on a car would ever listen to. I just want
one button for Radio 2 and one for Radio 4. And that’s it.
Eventually I relocated Bob Seger but unfortunately I was approaching a
roundabout and the sat nav woman had decided I was an idiot. So she told me
to go straight over and then repeated herself and then repeated it again.
And by the time she’d shut up Bob had been replaced with a miserable
sounding girl called Dildo.
Happily, by this stage I knew where I was so I thought, “Okay, I’ll turn the
sat nav off.” Well you can’t. It doesn’t matter what button you press, she
continues to give her instructions over and over again until you want to
bludgeon her and her family to death with an axe. Even if you pull over and
turn off the engine, she lies in a state of suspended animation, waiting to
spew electronic diarrhoea all over the cockpit when you set off again.
To make matters worse, in the desperate search for the right button I’d hit
something called “power”, which had ruined the ride. And then I’d made the
mistake of reaching for the indicator. You can’t turn that off either. It
doesn’t matter what you do with the stalk, it just goes on blinking until
it’s decided you’ve made the turn.
By this stage I was properly angry and now the sat nav cow was not only giving
me audible instructions but flashing them onto a head-up display on the
windscreen. And the indicator was still on and I couldn’t find Radio 4. And
then I hit another button on the steering wheel called “M”.
This brought up a rev counter in the head-up display and caused the seat to
start attacking my back. I’m not joking. Every time I went round a corner
some electronic chip decided I needed more support and firmed up the
appropriate bolster.
They say a Dutch bargee can swear for two minutes without repetition or
hesitation. But in the new M5 I beat that easily. Why, I wailed to myself,
can there not just be one big red button in the middle of the steering wheel
which turns all this crap off? Why do I have to live in some German geek’s
wet dream? And then to improve my mood still further, I came up behind a
Rover that was being driven by someone who was a hundred and seventy twelve.
In a temper I put my foot down to get past and couldn’t believe what
happened.
It seems that the M button, in addition to electrifying the seat, had told a
computer deep in the bowels of the engine that I was in the mood for some
fun and games. So now the V10 was no longer developing 400bhp. It was
handing over a massive 507. That’s right, 507. And as a result the M5 just
flew.
In the last five miles of my journey I discovered that deep beneath the layers
of utter and complete electronic nonsense, and the rather ugly body, there’s
one truly amazing car.
Just when I was thinking that BMW had made yet another car for yet another
software consultant, it did something I really wasn’t expecting.
It became a full-on M5. And praise doesn’t come higher than that.
Vital statistics
Model BMW M5
Engine Ten cylinders, 4999cc
Power 507bhp @ 7750rpm
Torque 383 lb ft @ 6100rpm
Transmission Seven-speed manual
Fuel 19.1mpg (combined)
CO2 357g/km
Acceleration 0-62mph: 4.7sec
Top speed 204mph
Price £61,760
Verdict The consummate wolf in sheep’s clothing
Rating 4/5
