PREVIEW: 2011 BMW 535i — Where’s the fun?

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 19/03/2010 (6055 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

CASCAIS, Portugal — The one thing you can be sure of when you walk out of a BMW news conference is you’ll have plenty of information. Your head aches from it. Your ears ring with it. Your jaws are sore from swallowing it whole like a snake.

I fairly staggered out of the press briefing at a hotel here laden with facts about the company’s latest personal executive sedan, the 2011 BMW 5-series. This numerical disquisition will soon be yours, so brace yourself.

But here’s a number that absolutely fascinated me. According to BMW execs, the 5-series — the company’s second-best selling model after the multifarious 3-series — represents 50 per cent of the company’s total profits. Buyers typically heap pricey, luxury technology and sport packages on top of the $50,000 base price, resulting in a tidy windfall for BMW, if not an F5 tornado of money.

Consider what this fact suggests about 5-series buyers: These people are buying the sedan because of its size — comfortable but still fairly intimate — and because of what the Germans love to call "sportivity." These buyers also yearn for the cutting-edge technological kraftwerk that comes as standard equipment in the flagship 7-series, the next segment up, and are willing to pay extra to get it.

In other words, these are people who want everything in BMW’s larder, and want it in a leaner, more lithe package. With the new 5-series, they’ll get it.

Active roll stabilization; electronic damper control; four-wheel steering; eight-speed transmission; a new twin-scroll, single-turbo 3.0-litre in-line six putting out 300 hp and 300 pound-feet of torque (or a twin-turbo 4.4-litre V8 with 400 hp, in the 550i); new robotic parking assistance; head-up display; night-vision; stop-and-go adaptive cruise control, which will maintain a following distance in traffic and slow to a stop then start rolling again, just like traffic on the 405; and roughly eight million other acronymic systems, gadgets, gizmos and flight surfaces loomed to the car’s high-speed cerebellum.

But as a strange little rock goblin with big lips once reminded us, you can’t always get what you want. With the 5-series you get everything you want — except fun.

Let’s start with styling. The new 5-series — the insider designation is the F10 model — is a good, solid, conservative, casually lovely effort but about as emotional as a Prussian wet nurse.

Design-directed by BMW’s Adrian Van Hooydonk (best name ever?), the new 5 takes on something of the proportions of 7-series, with the cabin moved back along the fuselage, creating a longer hood and more coupe-like roofline. The broader twin-kidney grille is moved lower on the nose of the car and canted slightly forward, and the hood itself features a diverging V-shape, as if the BMW badge were a boat motoring across a steel lake. Parallel accent lines strake the fuselage at the beltline and sill and the whole is bejeweled with exotic lighting instruments, including Xenon adaptive headlamps and L-shaped light-bar tail lamps (these burn extra bright when the driver engages the anti-lock braking system).

The new car has the singular advantage of succeeding the infamous (E60) generation 5-series, which was comprehensively weird-looking, as if it had been styled in a soft-serve ice cream machine. So comparatively, it’s a Raphael. I’ll grant the new car grew on me in the two days I spent with it and, further, it looks better in daylight than it does on some showroom turnstile or in photographs.

But do I want to have this car’s baby? No. My chastity is all too secure.

Inside, the car is just about perfect. I’d have to say BMW currently offers the best interior design of any German car company. The instrument panel comprises a "black panel" electronic display — only the four key gauges are illuminated unless the car needs to throw you a warning light of some kind. My test car had the brilliant 10-inch navigation display in the centre console, which is spectacular. And the whole cabin was wrapped in premium materials — aluminum, wood and leather — in a great gestural flourish.

So then, some more numbers. The 5-series’ wheelbase has been stretched to 116.9 inches — 3.2 inches longer than the previous model — over nearly the same length, which neatly sleek-ifies the profile. Eighteen-inch wheels and tires are standard, with 19s and 20s optional, further deepening the athletic stance. The 535i’s curb weight is up roughly 100 pounds, to 4,090 pounds, which is admirable considering the truckload of high-tech wonderment they dumped through the window. Zero to 60 acceleration is 5.7 seconds and the car’s top speed, with the sport package installed, is a brisk, Autobahn-like 150 mph (about 241 km/h).

The incumbent engine is the single-turbo in-line six, replacing the twin-turbo six of the same size (3.0 litres) and output (300 hp). This motor offers significantly better fuel economy and engine response — not "throttle" response because BMW’s turbocharged engines and Valvetronic eliminates the need for throttle bodies. For more information, take a plate of cookies to your local BMW dealership service bay.

The so-called N55 engine produces nominal torque (300 pound-feet) at a mere 1,200 rpm and doesn’t stop until north of 5,000 rpm. Stitched to the new eight-speed automatic, the engine delivers utterly seamless, nearly hydraulic thrust in any gear and at any rpm. Indeed, the engineers have hammered the torque curve so marvelously level, and poured tranquilizing syrup over every gear change, that the car actually feels a little remote and unfamiliar.

This is one of those moments that makes engineers want to throw grenades into press conferences, when people actually complain about refinement and smoothness. But, honestly, this car has just a dram more Novocaine in it than I’d prefer.

The optional engine is the big mutha 4.4-litre V8, with 400 hp and 450 pound-feet of torque; a 2.8-litre, 240-hp in-line six will also be available later in the year. As yet, BMW has no plans to offer a diesel option in the United States.

Gearheads will palaver over the fact the new 5-series uses a double wishbone-like multi-link front suspension now as opposed to the time-honoured strut suspension. The change helps stuff bigger brakes behind the wheel and has some positive effects for suspension geometry. By the numbers and by the stopwatch, you can’t really fault the BMW’s handling and road-holding. The big car is well-stabilized by the active anti-roll bar, so the car’s body stays relatively flat in corners. At speeds under 35 miles per hour (56 km/h), the Integral Active Steering turns the rear wheels 2.5 degrees opposite of the turn for a tighter turning radius. Above that speed, the wheels turn in sync with the front wheels, giving the car more authority in cornering.

If owners should ever take the 5-series on the track, they’ll find them benign, easy, capable, progressive and slightly boring. And numb as a well-digger’s… let’s just say numb, OK? Between the electric power steering, the active this and that, the four-wheel thing-y, the car has been sapped of anything approaching vividness and tactility.

If you want to fiddle at the margins with the car’s ride and handling, you can, via the Driving Dynamics Control, a system that progressively dials up the adaptive suspension, transmission sharpness, rev limit, steering response and the thresholds of the stability control system.

The settings include Comfort, Normal, Sport and Sport +, the last of which finally puts some whalebone in the car’s corset. It feels tighter and firmer, corners flatter — of course, with an active anti-roll bar in the rear, it ought to — and bites harder. But still, the steering feel is uncommunicative and artificial and just plain over-assisted,

Enthusiasts should definitely wait for the inevitable M5 performance version to arrive. Put some aero skirts on this thing, shoe it with racing rubber. There’s definitely a fun car under all this technology.

Can’t wait to drive that one.

— Los Angeles Times

THE SPECS

2011 BMW 535i

BASE PRICE: $50,000 US (est.)

PRICE, AS TESTED: $65,000 US

POWERTRAIN: Turbocharged 3.0-litre, 24-valve in-line six cylinder; variable valve timing and lift; eight-speed automatic transmission; rear wheel drive with electronic limited-slip differential

HORSEPOWER: 300 at 5,800 rpm

TORQUE: 300 pound-feet between 1,200-5,000 rpm

CURB WEIGHT: 4,090 pounds

0-60 mph: 5.7 seconds

WHEELBASE: 116.2 inches

OVERALL LENGTH: 192.8 inches

FINAL THOUGHTS: Next time, less velvet glove, more fist