I made a beeline for the M5 as soon as I got through the door. That, in a roomful of latest-generation M5s, may seem like a rather obvious thing to do, but the M5 on which I had my eye was not the latest one. That, I had driven yesterday. Today was a chance to turn back the clock and explore a little context.
Today was also a chance to finally live a childhood dream. Ask any of us who do this slightly ridiculous job of writing about cars, and we all have a few cars - and a few written pieces - which we experienced when younger and which convinced us that this was the career for us. I’ve a few of them, not least the famous 12,000-miles-in-one-week piece, which appeared in Autocar in March of 1993 featuring the Ford Mondeo.
There was another, though. It was a brief two-page article in a 1992 edition of Car magazine, written by the late, great Russell Bulgin. Bulgin was taken from us far too young, dying of cancer in 2002, aged only 44. Before he died, though, he created some of the greatest writing on the subject of cars, ever. He was wonderfully witty and erudite.
In 1992, Bulgin set himself a personal challenge: take the latest possible flight from London to Munich, collect a new BMW M5 saloon and race the dawn home, trying to get back to London before the sun peeped over the horizon.
Quite apart from being yet another masterclass in how to write about cars, Bulgin’s piece had a star other than his literacy - the E34 BMW M5. Being a 1992 car, this would have been the upgraded second-generation M5, with its 3.8-litre straight-six (no turbos then) producing 340hp (the earlier 3.5 version, introduced in 1988, had managed with 315hp). It also got nice ‘throwing star’ alloy wheels, replacing the previous design which looked rather like an unfortunate set of Halford’s wheel trims.
Beyond those improvements, the E34 M5 looked as perfect as a car could. A four-door saloon, sure, but one with styling that appeared to be hand-stitched and tailored, rather than formed in steel. Has any BMW - any car, for that matter - ever looked as quietly purposeful as an E34 M5?
Well, now one was sitting in front of me, the simple steel key attached to its central locking fob in my hand. Better yet, this was the rarest of rare - an M5 Touring estate. Only three M5 generations have come with the option of an estate body. This E34 was the first; then there was the V10-engined E60 from 2003; and now the new G90 M5 will offer a Touring option (more about that soon, once the embargo has lifted...).
Sit in, onto the pale beige bucket seats, and all seems perfect. The classically crisp, clean, clear BMW main dials sit behind a neat four-spoke steering wheel. On the centre console - angled towards the driver, of course - there’s climate control, a push-button stereo and a trip computer that looks like a school calculator. Basically, the E34 M5’s interior is proof that touchscreens are all bollocks, and we should go back to just having buttons.
There’s nothing in there that you don’t need, and everything you actually want. Amazon Alexa built-in? Do me a favour... There’s a proper, chunky-button 1990s car-phone though, from back when using a phone in the car was an act of technological one-upmanship.
The key goes into a slot on the steering column (remember that?) and turns, the straight-six engine, with its Bosch Motronic fuel injection and engine management system, slipping into an easy, smooth idle. The gearbox has five manually selected gears, so you just push forward and left, and the M5 pulls away.
At slow speeds, as is M5 tradition, there’s almost no clue that you’re driving anything especially potent. The E34 M5 Touring (with its practical 460-litre boot, but alas the M5 Touring was never, in this generation, offered in right-hand drive) lopes along like a 520i. Only two sounds dominate. The faint creaking of 1990s-spec plastics. And the straight-six, which at low-to-medium revs has a faintly V8-ish grumble, a deeper timbre than you might expect.
That changes as the revs build, which they do quickly as you approach the 6,900rpm power peak. Now the sound takes on that classic, creamy straight-six sound, but with added bass and gravel appropriate to an M-division product. Today, a damp day in Munich with lots of other traffic around, is not the time to be exploring the outer handling limits of a delicate, immaculate classic car, but I push the E34 just hard enough to see that it still has the magic of which Bulgin wrote more than 30 years ago - a delicacy of handling, a perfection of steering feedback and feel, and overriding all a sense of planted solidity which must have been reassuring as Bulgin speared up the Autobahn at then-unimaginable speeds.
You’ve got to remember that, back in 1993, this M5 had more power than the basic Porsche 911 and didn’t weigh all that much more either. It’s a proper powerhouse, a thoroughbred in a dray horse’s suit. It is completely brilliant, and most certainly not a disappointment after all these years of waiting and longing to drive one.
However, there is another...
Read the next instalment as Neil falls in love with yet another M5.