The 2025 BMW M5 Is a Brilliant Performer, But Hard to Love – Road & Track
2025-04-21T13:56:45Z
The new hybrid M5 packs a ton of power, but lacks the timelessness that keeps previous generations of the sport sedan precious today.
Forty years ago, BMW introduced the M5. If the people who conceived and engineered the first one are still around, they retired long ago. The customers who bought it must be in their sunset years too. No one on the current Road & Track staff was writing about cars professionally in 1985. We were either living with our parents or not yet born. The new seventh-generation M5 isn’t a throwback product built for misty-eyed nostalgia. It’s made for rowdy professionals born well after BMW established itself as an aspirational brand. With a 717-hp twin-turbocharged V-8 and all-wheel drive, this is a $146,225 gas-electric hybrid sedan built to fully modern expectations.
This story originally appeared in Volume 28 of Road & Track.
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Everything is bigger these days. Too big. And kind of shameless. This particular M5 is painted the same shade of blue that Walmart uses on its in-store signage. Its wide-open front maw is outlined in LED splendor. So unsubtle. Unlike previous M5s, there’s nothing buttoned-down about it. It doesn’t lack sophistication but puts exclamation points on all its available features. Big brakes! Carbon-fiber roof! Carbon-fiber deck spoiler! Black staggered wheels!
See More Photos Jonas Jungblut The unmistakable outline of the BMW twin-kidney grille makes a stronger impression than any light-up badge. Fun fact: The M badge dates to 1978 and came from Italdesign under Giorgetto Giugiaro.
This isn’t a sleeper. It’s a shouter—a digital peacock enthralled by its own peacockery.
Hit the start button, and the entire interior ignites with the digital graphic hype of a WWE ring-entrance video. Red, white, blue; bold animations across the curved front screen. All that’s missing is a brass-heavy theme song and John Cena waving his hand. On the right day, ahead of a delicious trip across epic roads, it’s an awesome display that frenzies the driver’s mind. But when you’re facing another hour-long commute on another workday, two and a half years into a three-year lease? It will be grating.
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Heading east from California’s Central Coast splendor into the hardscrabble rib cage of the inland desert, the M5 loafs behind ancient pickups that service the pump jacks alongside the roads near Taft. When a passing zone opens on State Route 119, the M5 takes a set, knocks itself down from eighth to fifth gear (maybe fourth—my attention is on steering-wheel grip), and rockets ahead. This isn’t the violent acceleration that comes from a Tesla Model S Plaid or the vibrant whoosh of a Lucid Air Sapphire; it’s still knitted to the appeal of internal combustion. The engine is thumping, and the gearchanges are reassuring. Some of the sounds are icky digitized fakery, but the character of the speed is old-school V-8. And that’s so much the better.
The hybrid system plays a supporting role. The S68 4.4-liter twin-turbo V-8 is the star. Proof of that: This is a hybrid vehicle that carries a $2600 gas-guzzler tax.
See More Photos Jonas Jungblut The twin-turbo 4.4-liter V-8 is a focal point, even if there’s not much eye candy with the hood open. The Carbon package swaps panoramic glass for a carbon-fiber roof, saving a claimed 66 pounds.
BMW buries the single electric motor inside the housing of the eight-speed automatic transmission, and it operates almost transparently. It’s fed by a modest 14.8-kWh battery pack. As a plug-in hybrid, the M5 can go up to 25 miles on electricity alone, according to the EPA. Why buy this car and then drive it like a golf cart? There can’t be any good reason. Operated in its EV mode, it’s more Tyco RC than BMW M. Techno-boring.
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On its own, the S68 V-8 is rated by BMW at 577 hp while spinning at 6500 rpm. That’s a lot, but it’s not as much as the 627 hp at 6000 rpm from the outgoing 2022 non-hybrid M5 CS’s S63 twin-turbo 4.4-liter V-8. Both engines are rated at 553 lb-ft of peak torque from only 1800 rpm. But the S68 is a sump-up redesign that shares few parts with the S63. Debuting in the 2023 X7 M60i SUV, the new engine uses a slightly higher 10.5:1 compression ratio and is optimized to be integrated with hybrid systems. And the VANOS variable timing system is now, like so much else, electrically actuated instead of hydraulic.
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For a manufacturer dealing with fuel-economy and emissions regulations around the world, using a plug-in-hybrid powertrain is a strategy to keep high-performance machines around. And in the M5, the 194 hp and 207 lb-ft of consistent torque from the electric motor also make for an extremely smooth drivetrain. It’s smooth while providing tremendous thrust. But wait—weight.
At 5251 pounds, the new M5 is an electrified porker. Compared with the outgoing F90-generation M5 Competition, this new G90 edition weighs in at a full 1014 pounds heavier. And that’s with the optional carbon-fiber roof panel. The BMW Group builds heavier vehicles—the Rolls-Royce Cullinan comes to mind—but accommodating such mass means making engineering compromises. Starting with the rubber.
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This Isn’t a Sleeper. It’s a Shouter.
Prime-cut meats, the Hankook Ventus S1 Evo Z tires are in 285/40R-20 front and 295/35R-21 rear sizes. The dimensions on their sidewalls carry an “HL” prefix denoting the high-load rating, which signifies a greater weight capacity than the XL tires on previous M5s. It also implies stiffer, more robust construction to handle the heft. That’s apparent on aggregate tarmac roads, like those that cover much of the western United States, where these tires bellow with the roar of a thousand basketballs being dribbled over sandpaper. It is the sound of an air cavity getting a bajillion microthumps. And it is a sound that virtually vanishes during travel over concrete or other smooth surfaces.
In the default Comfort mode, the M5 handles brilliantly, rides ridiculously well, and behaves like the luxury sedan upon which it is erected. In Sport mode, the manual shifting (using paddles behind the wheel) sharpens significantly, the steering gets heftier, and the suspension tautens on its adaptive dampers. Most all of those elements can be tuned to personal preference via the sweeping digital interface and then programmed into the red M buttons that float above the steering wheel’s horizontal spokes. But no matter what mode the M5 is in or how finely the driver has programmed the parameters, this is a big damn Bimmer. That in mind, there’s always a sense of distance between driver and car—a layer of computerized distrust engineered into the M5.
See More Photos Jonas Jungblut Digital graphics overwhelm the interior in a way that’s exciting, exhausting, and exasperating.
The BMW 5-series has swollen to the size of what was once the 7-series. At 200.6 inches in length, the current M5 is only 1.1 inches shorter overall than the long-wheelbase 2001 750iL and 4.4 inches longer than that same year’s short-wheelbase 740i. And this M5 is over four inches wider too.
All-wheel drive and gently tweaked stability and traction control mean it’s nearly impossible to get the M5 into trouble unless trouble is the goal. But turn off the nannies, which you must do to select the rear-wheel-drive mode, and it becomes a stonking-hot ogre. Yeah, the nose pushes a bit diving into corners, but the tail wags Labrador retriever–happy with proper throttle application. It’s possible even, for a moment, to believe this is an old-school, conservatively tailored BMW with more mechanical magic than electronic sorcery. And pounding this 2.6-ton bulldog into corner after corner proves that $8500 for the optional carbon-ceramic brakes is money well spent.
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Also, in rear-wheel-drive mode, the M5 can be coaxed into doing the sort of smoky burnout that teenage hooligans who grow up to be CFOs dream about. Billowy white clouds of burning Korean-branded, Hungarian-made tires.
In testing, the M5 catapulted to 60 mph in only 3.0 seconds, easily besting BMW’s own estimate of a 3.4-second performance. The 10.9-second-at-130-mph quarter-mile clocking is astonishing, and the only sedans that will keep up with or better it are battery-fed pure electrics that lack the M5’s dramatic flair and a few other high-performance hybrids. This thing generates numbers without electric soullessness. BMW claims a 190-mph top speed with the M Driver’s package, although forgoing that option means a limiter set to a mere 155 mph.
See More Photos Jonas Jungblut The big rectangle in the grille is yet another awkward front radar module mucking up a vehicle’s design.
There’s not much feel through the flat-bottom steering wheel, but the chassis works well in spite of the heft. On the skidpad, the M5’s orbit calculated to 0.98 g. And the 70-to-0-mph braking distance is a stunning 157 feet. Fade? That’s for writing careers, not the new M5.
As a sedan, the M5 works well. The front seats aren’t lavishly padded, but they’re adjustable enough to accommodate even awkward human shapes. There’s good room in the back too, with separate controls for the ventilation there and USB-C outlets to sustain screen addictions.
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The best interior feature is the head-up display projected onto the windshield. Colorful and easy to read, it sets a new standard for such things. And it shows critical information, such as the speed limit that’s being exceeded. As in all current luxury cars, lane-keeping assist and similar technologies are also aboard. They all can be turned off.
The new M5 is already at dealers with a base price of $123,275, including that gas-guzzler punishment. In subdued colors, the M5 sedan is a more dignified and handsome car. But the glamour model is the wagon, or Touring in BMW-ese. It is simply better-looking. The massive haunches are more purposeful when set under a longer roof, as if the M5 was meant to be a wagon all along.
See More Photos Jonas Jungblut Santorini Blue paint is one of more than 150 hues available from the BMW Individual order sheet. The hybrid powertrain enables the M5 to do EV-rivaling feats of acceleration while retaining its internal-combustion soul.
While the wagon variant has extra appeal, respecting the new M5 sedan is still easy. It’s a brilliant performer in so many ways, and it even returned nearly 20 mpg during its stay with R&T. But it’s a hard car to love. There’s so much tech aboard that seems destined to age poorly, to look like 8-bit Atari graphics in only a few years. That the sun visors still operate manually is appreciated.
The new M5 lacks the timelessness that keeps previous M5s precious today. The straightforward designs that, though quaint, are still logical and attractive. In 2065, when the quantum-proton-dilithium-warp 14th-generation M5 is going on sale, will anyone look back on this generation with much affection?
ILLUSTRATION BY JIM HATCH
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