It's Fast, But Has the 2018 BMW M5 Lost Its Character?

Just ignore the F10 M5 and think back to the model before it. Sure, it was not pleasant to look at, but its V10 engine sent power to the back and a pleasing sound to your ears. What's more, it had the sort of performance you could enjoy on the road, drifting at a roundabout in the middle of the night. It didn't try to be a super-GT with comfortable suspension or Rolls-Royce levels of sound deadening.

We're not surprised that things ended up this way. BMW M has steadily been transitioning into heavier cars with big turbo power. It's what the customers want. But if somebody told us this generation would weigh 1,930 kilograms while we were publishing all those spyshots, we wouldn't have been as excited. I mean, even the E61 M5 Touring was 50 kilograms lighter than this one.

What happened to having a fun car right out of the box? The 2018 BMW M5 has three modes for the AWD, three for the throttle response and probably a few thousand combinations between those, the traction control, gear changes, steering, suspension, and brakes.

The review from Autocar says there's too much going in that department, as it takes way too long to change these settings on the road. It also notes that part of the sound is piped in through the speakers and the M5 isn't as lovely to listen to as the new Mercedes-AMG E63 S. The same goes for the exterior styling and the suspension.

So the M5 is a sort of super-fast executive car while the AMG is more angry and raw all the time. We're back to the E90 M3 vs. W204 C63 era, it seems.