Heated power seats with lumbar support usually look fatter and plusher than the M5's spare-looking but handsome buckets (ours were red and black), but like everything else related to the driving of this car, they were perfect: Perfectly comfortable, perfectly suited to the task of real driving. There's a cool dead pedal to plant your left foot against during hard cornering (a necessary touch as we will see). The leather-wrapped steering wheel had the right feel, no surprise, while its hub contained stereo controls under the left thumb and cruise controls under the right - and there's no better or safer place for cruise control, because you can quickly exit with a simple twitch of your thumb. With a car like this, you tend to forget about the back seat - it is, after all, a seriously self-indulgent vehicle - but because it's a 540 Sedan before it's an M5, the back seat offers good room and comfort.

We liked the Alcantara anthracite roof liner, otherwise known as charcoal gray suede-like, never mind that "Car and Driver" said it made the M5 interior feel like "another Teutonic coal bin." We also liked the polished metal instrument bezels, the ring around the 180-mph (300km/h!) speedometer. But we hated the hysterical thick neon-like orange and red lines beginning at 6500 rpm on the tach; since the rev limiter activates at about 6800 rpm anyhow, why have that awful constant message at 7000 rpm that screams RED ALERT YOU IDIOT! Why? Because BMW can. The glowing orange redline is part of a cold-engine protection plan; when the engine is cold, the orange moves down to lower rpm. In winter it could be quite useful, but in summer it will be ignored. We fired up the M5 on a hot August afternoon, and two gentle miles later it was still telling us not to rev over 5100 rpm. Race car, indeed.

Email from a beautiful blonde friend:

Hi there,
Thanks again for the ride. It was a BLAST! Sorry I got queasy, I'm just not used to that much g-force in the turns. That was some power! Fairly breathtaking, is exactly what it was. Keep me in mind for the next ride.
Very best regards,

Amy

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Leaving Amy … where to begin? The M5 driving experience has more meat than there is space to describe it.

Let's start with the big, throbbing, heart of the car: its engine. At 302 cubic inches, the engine is not huge; but 21st century technology draws a heavy punch from a small package, so think of this 5.0-liter V8 as really big. The speed specs on the fastest production sedan on the planet? Acceleration from 0 to 60 in 4.8 seconds; quarter mile in 13.3 seconds at 108 mph; top speed electronically limited to 155 mph, which in sixth gear would be a casual 5200 rpm or so.
The powerband is eminently comfort-able and cruisable, thanks largely to BMW's VANOS system of variable valve timing, which brings the massive torque down into the 3000 and even 2000 rpm range. The free-flowing exhaust system, which exits in four thick tailpipes, is considerably muted for the law, alas, so you have to open the windows to hear the engine sing.

With such acceleration and quick, sure handling, the M5 passes on a two-lane like a motorcycle. It's a fun and personally powerful feeling: twitch out and hammer it, twitch in and back off the gas, done in seconds. On the freeway you can use your foot to move in and out of holes: keep it in fourth gear and squirt, shift to fifth to get legs, and settle in sixth when there's no traffic.
You can hit the 6800-rpm rev limiter in a heartbeat in the lower gears, and it's easy to do so inadvertently because the engine never screams or sounds stressed in any way. You drive by the tach a lot because of this, but you soon get the rhythm of upshifting at 6200 rpm when you're working it. The engine likes to work aggressively in the twisties at nearly 6000 rpm. It feels so strong that you get the feeling the rev limiter is set slightly and conservatively low, and the specs would support this, as the engine makes its maximum 394 horsepower at 6600 rpm. An upshift at 6200 rpm is actually a short shift, and feels like it. Six thousand rpm in third gear is about 88 mph, and it's a measure of the control of this car that this is not an uncommon place to be, when you're driving for satisfaction on a desolate winding two-lane road, in a region of a western state with almost no population. You live in Jersey, you want an M5, you move out West to exercise it.