I got to spend a week in this car, and what a pleasure it was. This car does everything well. There’s literally nothing bad to say about it. Maybe older drivers will say that they’re disappointed BMW didn’t offer a manual transmission, and sure, that would be amazing, but a couple of things.
First, in today’s market, to be competitive in a straight line with other car makers, you have an automatic, or paddles. It’s just how it is. The GTR’s and new exotics will be roasting you all day long. in fact, even back in the day when I would take my rx7 not New England Dragway, the quickest cars were almost always the automatics, most notably the Fox body 5.0s with the 3 speed transmission. Those dudes were running 11’s and 10’s while I was driving my ass off to hit 12’s haha. In all fairness they were rocking more power than I was most the time. My car was set up to be a handler. The only exception to the automatic transmission rule up there there would be the imports with HUGE aftermarket turbos…your 3000gt’s Supras, or the occasional Rx7. And truth be told, those cars are TERRIBLE to drive on normal roads. No low end. They are highway/1/4 mile killers and nothing more. They BLOW as a daily. I don’t know how people drive them. I hate lag. Won’t deal with it.
Secondly, this car has 625 horsepower, and 750 nm torque. Side note, nm stands for Newton meter, which is a current unit of measure of torque. 1 ft pd on torque = 1.35581795 N⋅m. Sorry to dork out, but I was like wtf when I saw nm. Anywho, this car is fast. Sure, it’s all wheel drive, and that helps it in the stability department, but that it a lot of power for a stock car with a stick. Your average driver, that has more money than experience will get themselves in trouble very quickly. So even at a curb weight of 4345 bs, this thing still goes zero to 62.14 mph (or 100 km as advertised) in 3.3 seconds. I didn’t test that. The car isn’t mine, and it’s still under 3,000 miles. I don’t know what current manufacturers recommend for break in periods, but it was around 3,000 back in the day I believe. I can tell you that even at half throttle, you’re still putting overly aggressive drivers and bad mergers in their place, and they’re often not expecting it.
This car is understated. Sure, someone that knows what they’re looking at will know right away that this car means business, but the average terrible driving bully won’t know what hit them. You will Ivan Drago their ass (Youtube Rocky 3 for help if you don’t know) seemingly out of nowhere and you won’t even have to tell them “I must break you”. First off, it’s pretty quiet. It’s loud when it first fires up. You’ll turn heads in parking lots upon start up. However it gets quieter when it warms up. When you’re driving around town, especaiily while in full automatic mode, it’s very quiet. Quite pleasant.
This car has more settings than could ever imagine, and one of them is that you can set it to shift at 3 different points ranging from lower in the rpm’s to higher. If you’re driving it in the least aggressive mode it shifts at like 1,500 rpm or something. Super low. If you drive it with the paddles and shift higher it does make more noise. Nothing crazy though. Now, if really get into it, the car explodes in volume, and takes off like Picard said “engage”. Warp speed for sure. I got into it a couple of times on the highway on onramps and I can tell you that I hit the century mark in a very short amount of time. LOL. Good thing the M’s brakes are as good as they are. Seriously, its rear brakes are bigger than most car’s fronts.
I put some serious miles on this car as I has two gigs that were 3 hours away, and it was amazing. The car was comfortable. The seats, while comfortable, can be adjusted in many ways to bolster you more should you desire. And like I stated earlier, the car is very civil when you’re chilling. Quiet power. The interior is pleasant to be in as well, and it has swag. The seats have the M5 logo in the headrest that lights up upon startup, something a 90’s import scene vet appreciates. The interior also has lighted trim that can be color changed. I didn’t get any pictures of it at night, but it looks great. You can probably google it.The interior is sharp.
The all wheel drive handles even terrible weather pretty easily. Trust me, I got caught in horrifying weather coming back from a gig in Albany, while in one of my uncle’s other cars…the M5 Competition CS (next trim level up). I’ll write something about that soon. That car has even more power than this trim level. There apparently is an option to make the car pretty rear wheel drive. I didn’t have the car long enough to try it, but next I will.
The only interesting thing I noticed is that sometimes when you’re trying to unlock the car, it locks itself right away. You’ll sometimes have to unlock it a couple of times to get in, or even time pulling the door open before it can lock itself again. The CS does it as well, so I’m wondering if this is a current BMW thing in general.
Anyway, here are some pictures of it. The car is a 2023 BMW M5 Competition in Skyscraper Grey. It’s the 50th anniversary of the M division at BMW which is why the hood logo is different. Pretty cool.
Until next time. Have a day.
