Styling
It's a curious one, because it's undeniable that the G99 M5 is an appealing-looking car. Perhaps, though, acutely aware of the modern PHEV BMW's, erm,
weight problem, the issue was that when we first saw it up close and personal, it was sitting cheek-by-bloated-jowl with the majestic
E39 M5 heritage car - and the size disparity between the two was like when you were a kid who was too young to know better, and you'd play with your 1:64 scale Matchbox cars alongside your 1:43 Corgis. So you'd have some gargantuan Ford Sierra in Texaco livery, domineering a tiny E21 BMW 323i towing a glider. Or, if you want a much more up-to-date reference, it's like when all those memes erupted once the BMW M8 GTE began its motorsport career.
But we digress. The long and short of all this is that the G99 is unapologetically chunky and overtly aggressive. It lacks the subtle visual nuance and menace of its only two Touring forebears, the LHD E34 and the later
V10-powered E61, so whether you think that's a good thing or a bad thing probably depends on how much you liked the look of the old
C8 Audi RS 6 Avant. Personally speaking, we loved the old Ingolstadt wagon's hench form and we definitely think the G99 is one of BMW's better recent styling attempts, although that's a very low design bar to have to clear. Anyway, make of the appearance what you will. It's unmistakably an M5 and unmistakably something seriously potent.
Also, while the car in our pics is a deep shade of purple (nice), our tester was rendered in the five-grand-plus optional BMW Individual hue of Anglesey Green metallic. A truly glorious colour which does the G99's lines all the favours in the world, but then it wants to be for the price of a decent used 2005 MINI Cooper all on its ownsome.
Interior
Sticking with the specification theme, BMW UK had finished the M5 Touring's interior in Kyalami Orange - a quite spectacular effort, that granted surely won't be to all tastes, which when teamed with the green exterior just kept making us think of the seminal quad-rotor Mazda 787B. Munich ought to call this particular colour combination the 'Renown' trim.
Anyway, material quality is magnificent across the board and the deeply sculpted seats are beautifully supportive, without resorting to those bizarre carbon cock-cuppers BMW fits in some of the contemporary M3 and M4 models; these unsightly items being the only black mark against the sublime
M3 CS Touring.
What you might not be so enamoured with is BMW's widescreen dashboard array. It doesn't have the intimacy of a good old-fashioned cluster and demurer infotainment display, so for all the fancy crystalline ambient lighting and illuminated M5 badges on the seats and swathes of carbon fibre plastering the surfaces, your eye will inevitably be drawn to the flat slab of digital real-estate dominating the fascia. It all works well enough, though, and has crisp, clean graphics, while there are nice flashes of red for items like the start/stop button on the transmission tunnel, and the 12 o'clock marker plus 'M1' and 'M2' configurable buttons on the steering wheel. Although that item is one of those BMW M affairs that's a touch uncomfortable, because it's ever so slightly too fat to hold, even for those of us with larger hands.
Practicality
No complaints here. There's enough room in the rear row of seating in the BMW M5 Touring that four adults should be more than happy sitting and travelling in it for any length of time, while the obvious benefit of this being an estate means a sizeable 500-litre boot is on offer underneath the Beemer's tailgate. Of course, you can't help but wonder how much litreage the PHEV gear is otherwise consuming in the M5, yet most reasonable people aren't going to complain about this car's cargo capacity. Nor its ability to haul up to two tonnes of braked trailer - unusual for an M5 wagon, as the predecessor E61 model couldn't be fitted with a towing hitch, due to the placement of the backbox for its quad exhaust pipes.
Performance
In a wholly expected turn of events, the BMW M5 Touring PHEV turns out to be dementedly quick from pretty much anywhere on the rev counter that you care to choose. It has a monster biturbo 4.4 V8 up front, which probably wouldn't be that laggy all on its own. But as it has the torque-infill back-up of part-electric power, plus the immense traction advantages of its M xDrive AWD and an ultra-slick-shifting M Steptronic 'box, you plant the right-hand pedal in the G99, you hang on tight and focus on an indeterminate point on the horizon. As you'll be there a heck of a lot quicker than you might initially think.
Sounds good, too; maybe not the most tuneful V8 in automotive history, or even in BMW's own back catalogue, but with enough of a growling, guttural snarl about it that you, as the driver, know that it is instantly conveying its singular intentions to you through acoustics alone. This is an angry-sounding car, so in terms of the blistering speed it has, the calibration of its throttle and brake pedal, and the song it plays while working through its rev range, we have no issue with the PHEV powertrain.
What we cannot ignore, though, is that for all the brilliance of BMW M's engineers, even they cannot escape the laws of physics entirely. And there are just occasions, when you're working the G99 M5 reasonably hard, that you can sense the immense, barrelling 2,555kg mass is taking some slowing down, even with the monumental brakes the company has fitted to the car. It's rare that you do get this 'runaway train' impression, but it is there, nonetheless.
Kudos for the electrification process making the BMW semi-sensible for running costs, though. We picked it up from Farnborough with a full tank of Super and its 18.6kWh battery completely topped up. We didn't once plug it in after that point and, across the ensuing 572 miles of testing, its trip computer reckoned it had achieved an overall economy of 28.1mpg (although it did also claim 56.5 miles/kwh, which is nothing short of witchcraft, i.e., not real), with almost 70 miles purportedly covered on electric power alone. Honestly, try running an E61 M5 and getting 28mpg from it. Go on. Give it a whirl. You won't ever even get close to matching that return. Ask us how we know.
Ride & Handling
Again, the story here is that the M5 Touring is a sensational car for driver reward, but you can't help wondering what it might be like if it 'only' had about 650hp, no PHEV gear and a kerb weight in the region of 2,000kg, rather than 2.5 tonnes. Infrequent will be the times you can catch the G99's chassis out, on the public roads at any rate. It has grip for days and an imbued balance that's most delightful, while also being far more approachable and engaging than you might imagine of something with 727hp and 1,000Nm flowing through its Michelins.
It also rides sweetly too, tautly controlled and on the firm side of things, but with top-notch damping that filters out the sharper, jagged edges of the UK's roads network from ever reaching the passenger compartment. In its more benign modes, the M Steptronic shuffling its way up to eighth as quickly as it can, this M5 is an imperious cruiser - rock-steady and thoroughly cultured. We love it.
But on those few occasions when you're trying to muscle it into challenging corners, and you're suddenly acutely aware of its significant mass and its sheer physical size, it just takes the slightest final layer of gloss off the M5T's otherwise-sparkling dynamic performance. For our money, it cannot hope to match the exquisite masterpiece which was the F90 M5 CS, probably the finest M car ever committed to the public highway, and there's also no real desire (from our side of the fence, anyway) for BMW to make any harder, better, faster, stronger iterations of the G99 further down the line. This thing as a CS? With even more power and torque? You'd need to junk all the rear seats and about 70 per cent of the sound-deadening to make it feel like it genuinely merited that exalted honorific.
Value
At £116,160 before you've even so much as approached BMW's lengthy, and costly, options list, the M5 Touring PHEV is clearly not what you might term a bargain. Crucially, the excellence of the overall package and the sheer breadth of talent it has in all disciplines means that it doesn't feel overpriced in the slightest at such a figure, although Munich's bods have clearly taken a leaf out of compatriot Porsche's book and decided that even cars which are well into six figures basic can still be loaded up with twenty or thirty grand's worth of extras as well. So the question is whether you still reckon the G99 M5 is worth it when you're looking at a £130,000, £140,000 machine with some choice manufacturer upgrades?
Verdict
An astounding all-round display from the G99 BMW M5 means that we, as owners of an M5 wagon anyway and big fans of almost everything that has been dreamt up in the
Vierzylinder building since about, oooh, 1959, are already huge advocates of this phenomenal PHEV. As hyper-fast estates go, it is clearly one of the best of the breed - even if it's not an inexpensive proposition these days.
Yet its complexity and its unfettered bulk do just enough to the overall driving experience to temper our ardour for it from reaching stratospheric levels. Make no mistake, this PHEV is a very, very, very, very,
very good performance car, but it doesn't eclipse the G90 CS in the M5 lineage for us, or indeed the E39 M5 (we perhaps shouldn't have driven this four-door legend immediately preceding our week-and-a-bit in the G99, eh?) - and if you're asking us which is our favourite go-faster Touring in the German manufacturer's history, then our choice remains the G81 M3 CS. Still, the G99 is an utterly marvellous effort, and we're immensely glad that BMW finally saw sense and revived the M5 Touring format - to such devastating effect - after its 14-year hiatus.
