BMW 5-series – ride and handling
BMW's dynamic DNA is identifiable, albeit in spite of the significant size and mass of the new 5-series
The 5-series has been subject to speculation about its identity. For while there’s a 5 on the boot lid, its girth, mass and its gait say 7. The G60 certainly puts the most distance between the driver and the essential 5-series dynamic ‘rightness’ of any we’ve yet driven, that’s still faintly detectable, if you dig for it.
The superb ride is 7-series alike, with the adjustable suspension configurable through the MyModes menus (there’s a MyModes button, but the individual settings are on the screen). Even Sport+ is tolerable because of course, if you put too much spring rate into a heavy car, it’s going to pogo and crash its way along any imperfect surface. But no, the 5-series is a resolutely unflappable barge across ground.
That doesn’t sound like it ought to translate into a particularly capable performance car, or engaging driving experience when you turn up the wick. Yet while we had our concerns, straight away, the 5-series showed form, balancing its unexpected compliance with a good degree of control. It’ll over-rebound if you push too hard but there’s composure here that encourages you to explore the performance of the car and develop a flow at a higher average speed.
That performance is substantial in the 550e, so the AWD is a welcome addition. There’s an abundance of grip and being xDrive, motivation is biased towards the rear of the car, so the inherent balance and adjustability remains. Especially in less than perfect conditions, the rear end is more than willing to power into a wider line through a corner as you adopt an almost neutral steering position. The 530e being rear-wheel-drive, will step out under power in a more traditional sense, requiring more countersteer, but it’s far from a hot rod.
Steering feel is limited however and what little does come through, is usually not a positive, but a warning of the car’s mass. The gravelly sensation of the tyres struggling for purchase as the car’s momentum threatens to derail you is one you have once before readjusting how you approach driving the car. Not so much a problem in the lighter 530e and 520i, which while lighter overall and on turn-in, have lighter steering that’s more incongruous in feel relative to the sheer size of the car you’re at the tiller of. At low normal speeds too, the ratio of the rack can sometimes feel odd, as you often need to feed in a bit more rack to find the direction you intended.
Overall, it still drives like a BMW should. That’s to say, in a sophisticated and still-engaging way, appropriate of a car that’s been honed by keen drivers. It’s just, the G60 5-series is in relative terms, more remote than any that’s come before it, albeit still more willingly dynamic than a 7-series.
