Interior
reviewed by
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 (300k!) 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.
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