Most of us wouldn’t dare buy a V10-powered E60-generation M5 as a project car. As epic as the S85 BMW V10 is to use, its not exactly great to own. The S85 isn’t the most reliable of engines and repairs can get frighteningly expensive. The rest of the car is considered to be pretty unreliable, too. It’s why E60 M5s can be had for surprisingly cheap at the moment. So buying one to use as the basis for a project car seems like wallet-suicide. Which is why we’re very happy to see DriveTribe take on that very challenge, so we can watch without having to pay.
Even better still, DriveTribe actually bought an E61 BMW M5 Touring, the wagon version of the M5. Why is that better? What could possibly be better than a five-door family wagon with a 500 horsepower, naturally-aspirated, 5.0 liter V10 that revs to 8,250 rpm? I’m struggling to think of anything.
What’s interesting is that they bought their E61 M5 Touring for a surprisingly cheap price, due to it having a sketchy past on paper. Look up its history and you’ll find that it was fully written off, from insurance, due to a small fire. When anyone sees “fire” in a car’s history, they almost always immediately skip it. However, this car’s fire was small and caused no structural damage. The reason insurance wrote the car off was due to the cost of its interior replacements costing more than a certain percentage of the car’s value.
Due to that, DT was able to get the E61 M5 Touring for a great price, especially when you consider that it’s mechanically solid and is actually quite a rare spec. It’s only one of 20 E61 M5 Tourings painted in Carbon Black. Even as someone who doesn’t really like E60s, I this E61 M5 is fantastic looking.
We can’t wait to see what DriveTribe does with this E61 M5 Touring in their subsequent videos. We’re also happy we don’t have to foot the bills.
