If you’re a car enthusiast, regardless of preferred brand, you know of the BMW M5. It’s one of the most iconic automobiles of all time, perennially setting the standard for what a big, performance sedan should be. With each new iteration of the M5, competing car manufacturers scramble to create their own versions of what the most current M5 is. It’s the benchmark and it has been since 1985.
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Back in the early ’80s, BMW was looking to go racing after the demise of its M1 racing series. BMW wanted to enter into Formula One, with team Brabham, but BMW Motorsport boss, Jochen Neerpasch, had a different idea. The idea was to take the absolutely fantastic 3.5 liter, 24-valve BMW M1 engine and stuff it in a 5 Series. He proposed this idea to the board at BMW and soon after, the legendary E28 BMW M5 was created.
BMW engine designer, Paul Rosche, famous for his work on the incredible 6.1 liter BMW V12 that powered the McLaren F1, has a slightly different story about the M5’s origins, but his is a bit more interesting. During that time of heavy tension between East and West Germany, Eberhard von Kuenheim was the CEO of BMW. Von Kuenheim, for protection purposes in dangerous times, needed to be driven around in a turbocharged BMW 745i and his bodyguards followed in BMW 535is. However, the 535i wasn’t fast enough to keep up with the 745i, so Rosche requested a faster version of the 5 Series from the Motorsport Division. Thus, the M5 was born.
The latter is a bit sexier of a story, with political tension driving the need for fast bodyguard cars so as to protect BMW’s CEO. Whichever story is true, however, Neerpasch had to get the idea of the M5 past the board as a production car and we’re forever grateful for it. No one at BMW thought it would be a great success, as they felt customers wouldn’t pay that much of a premium for a faster 5 Series, but it sold 2,700 units in the first year and BMW knew it had something special on its hands.
The E28 M5 has always been a personal favorite of mine, now even more so after hearing those stories. Not only is it one of BMW’s coolest all-time cars, but it created a legend that still lives on today and shows no sign of ever leaving us and it has an incredible story behind it. If you didn’t already love the M5, it’s hard not too, now.
[Source: Telegraph]
Refer to the first M badged customer car… The M535i born in 1980 – before the M5, 1985 built (5 years later).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4EiX52RcKeQ
TheArchitect, thanks for sharing this! I love that simple straight line from the front to the back. So simple, yet so beautiful.
I really like the story about how Von Kuenheim needed a faster car for his bodyguards. Whatever story it was, it was a great decision from BMW. I think everyone that’s a true car/bmw enthusiast would love to own one one day. The styling, performance, and engineering efforts are unlike any other vehicles I know about.
[…] All of that was easy to do because learning the dynamics of my car was easy. Nothing about the handling, shifting or braking ever surprised me. It truly was the “ultimate driving machine” and the ultimate car for me to learn on. Starting with the 2002 and seemingly all the way up to the E90 generation, BMW made some of the ultimate driver’s cars on the market. But at the same time, BMW didn’t follow the market or, really any rules for that matter. They didn’t try to fit into a segment because they created their own, like the “sport sedan.” These were practical cars, meant to be driven and driven hard. Soon, cars like the M1 were created and brought rise to the BMW M division as we know it. Not long after came the E30 M3, a homologation special built purely to go racing. The M1’s smooth inline six then made its way back into the E28 5-series chassis, resulting in the birth of the M5. […]