Elana Scherr: M5 Appreciation

From the May 2022 issue of Car and Driver.

You aren’t supposed to meet your heroes for fear that they will fail to live up to expectations or ask to borrow money. But what about meeting other people’s heroes? I didn’t grow up in BMW circles. My friends’ parents had Ford Taurus wagons and Chevy Astro vans. When we were old enough, my crowd drove hand-me-down Camrys and poorly tuned Dodge Darts. BMWs, especially M GmbH models, were for the bad guys in Ronin or the big-city boyfriend whom the main character leaves for the hometown fella in a Hallmark movie.

Even once I was working professionally with cars, my focus was on classics and domestic muscle. BMW 2002, sure. 2002 BMW? I don’t know her. The first time I seriously looked at an M3 was when Chevrolet declared it the benchmark for the sixth-gen Camaro. Or was it Ford, which mentioned it as competition for the GT350? Either way, around 2016 or so, it occurred to me that people sure talked a lot about BMW’s M cars when they were highlighting a certain balance of handling, power, and refinement. Their eyes would get a glassy, faraway look, and their right hand would twitch around a remembered gearshift. These were clearly cars that set a standard other vehicles struggled to meet.

So it was with excitement—and a small amount of hero-meeting trepidation—that I embarked on a 400-mile M road trip, from Greenville, South Carolina, to Amelia Island in Florida, in a variety of M5s from BMW’s Heritage Collection. I only wish we’d had more miles and more days, because there are a lot of overrated things in this world, but an early M5 isn’t one of them. The second I turned the key on the ’88 E28, I understood the appeal. Even with 34 years on it, the six-cylinder barked to the ready like a guard dog, and the five-speed shuddered in its pale leather wrap. It’s sort of a cute car now, with slightly dorky underbite bumpers and an eager profile, but in the late ’80s it must have been intimidating coming up in a rearview mirror at triple digits, blacked out like a censored letter, holding curves like Casanova.

I moved through rides like a time traveler, about a decade at a time, evolution in fast-forward. The E28 was quick and smooth, but the E34, a 1990, was quicker and smoother. It was less polished in some ways than the earlier car, more stripped down to the basics with a spare, gray cabin. But who needs butter when the bread is so good? The E34 got a stroked version of its predecessor’s six and a hearty 310 horsepower. It was quick for its time, zero to 60 in 5.6 seconds. More impressive to me was the cool jazz vibe of the engine, which confidently hit the high (revving) notes all down the Atlantic coast.

My favorite M5, though—because you can take the girl out of the muscle car, but she’ll always love a V-8—was the ’00 E39. Elegant in fine-grained silver metallic, wide stanced, and mean eyed, the E39 would make an excellent villain’s car, with a big trunk begging to be filled with stolen diamonds and a leather and burlwood interior designed for cackling in during the getaway. It was a gleeful high-speed cruiser, but running in sixth gear felt unfair to the others, so I slowed ‘er down and left the highway for a web of side roads through trees hung with Spanish moss, where I came up hot on lumbering trucks just for the joy of downshifting for the pass. No wonder BMW drivers have a reputation: This car wants you to be bad; it likes it.

Like everything from the ’80s and ’90s, classic M cars are on a revved-up rise in collectibility, and I see why. While the modern M offerings would destroy any of the classic ones on a racetrack, they lack the playfulness of the early models. When I had to turn in the E39’s key, I felt my eyes get glassy and my right hand twitch for just one more shift. Mmm, indeed.

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