2017 BMW 540i: First Drive
Like a bad paint job, BMW's 2003 5-series looks better the further away from it you get. Now, almost 15 years away, it's an occasional reminder of BMW's brave flame-surfaced past. Maybe you loved that E60 Five, the original Z4 and the 1-series. Could be that you hated them. But you definitely had an opinion.
The latest 5-series (codename G30 for BMW geeks) doesn't engender such debate. Visually, it's a shrunken 7-series with a sprinkle of Three: blandly handsome, but don't be surprised if your automobile ambivalent neighbor mistakes it for last year's car. Sure, we got some stares on the streets of shabby chic Lisbon, but expensive cars are so rare here you could drive past a bus stop in a 15-year old TT and someone would still immortalize you on Instagram. Inside and out it's such a careful evolution of the car it replaces that chief sculptor Adrian van Hooydonk's team must have worn radiation suits as they worked on the clays, just in case any dangerously interesting ideas leaked out during the design process. Flair is in short supply, and that's a shame because this is a far smarter car than the outgoing 5-series.
Greater use of aluminum and high-strength steel means it's almost 210lb lighter than the old model, but factor in the new model's extra equipment and the reality is BMW's engineers actually had to banish over 300lb. As before, there are double wishbones under the front end, but this time there's the option of steerable wheels at the rear.
Interior changes follow the lead of the exterior: subtle as a seasoned auction bidder's nods. The highlight is a new generation iDrive system that looks at first glance like the kit you get in a 3-series but can be operated either by the traditional control wheel, by touching the screen itself, using voice commands - which no longer require you to affect a bad Inglish Eccent-or by throwing gestures at the screen like you're auditioning for an NWA tribute band. That gives it one-upmanship over its Mercedes E-class arch rival, but with its optional dual-screen setup, and sweeping dash design with Bentley-esque air vents, Benz has it licked for pizazz.
But if Munich hasn't taken a leaf out of the Mercedes book of interior design, it's certainly paid attention to its rival's refinement. This latest 5-series doesn't only look like a 7-series, it glides like one too. Road noise and surface imperfections are as unnoticed as kitchen chaos when you're dining at a high end restaurant, and the options list includes now expected sleep-promoting tech like adaptive cruise control and automatic steering in lanes for brief periods.
You don't have to delegate driving duties, but the 5-series does such an impressive job of cocooning you, you might think you have anyway. This is not a bad handling car. In fact a future comparison test will likely prove our hunch that it's the best in the class. Steering response is improved, as is agility on cars fitted with the rear-wheel steering setup. For a big car, this thing really hustles. But it's far more fun going fast than slow. That steering is disconcertingly overlight at low speeds and feels slightly less natural on rear-steer cars than it does on those with the traditional fixed rear toe angle.
The 540i-whose badge signified a V8 once upon a time-has a turbo six that makes way more power. Three-thirty-five horses, in this case. It rips through its eight gears on the way to 62mph in 4.8sec in xDrive all-wheel drive guise, sounding crisp and purposeful-but also like its fitted to the car in front, rather than your own.
It's hard to imagine rationalizing the need for more performance than this, but if you can, the 550i V8 (62mph in 4.0sec, and there's still an M5 to come, remember), will oblige. Unconfirmed, but likely to appear, is the six-cylinder 530i diesel, now with 261bhp and enough torque to warrant BMW offering a fifth-wheel hitch on the trunklid. Other models are the new 248bhp 530i with four-cylinder turbo power, and a plug-in hybrid version of the same, the 530e.
BMW has shifted almost eight million 5-series since the first in 1972 and claims it's the model people most associate with the brand. If you're going to get a car wrong this isn't the one. BMW hasn't got it wrong. The extra refinement is astounding, the chassis still better than anyone else's. But how about a sprinkle of E60 ballsiness, next time, Munich?
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