BMW certainly doesn’t make the most reliable cars out there, but with proper maintenance, many models will probably outlive you. Case in point, we recently talked about a 342,000-mile M3 E46 still going strong and now we’re highlighting an M5 E39 with similar mileage. The difference between the two is a negligible 2,000 miles, but there’s more to this car than what the odometer is showing.
You can tell right from the get-go it’s not an original M5 E39 by the discreet hood bulge and not-so-discreet vents. They’re made from carbon fiber, much like the trunk lid and the rear diffuser to shave off weight. The latter flanks a custom quad exhaust, while the car sits lower to the road on BBS wheels.
The owner went the extra mile with forged carbon on the steering wheel, combined with Alcantara featuring blue stitching. Despite its venerable age and high mileage, the two-tone interior looks decent, with no worrying signs of wear and tear. We’re dealing with a 2000 M5 E39 with an impressively clean engine bay hosting the S62 unit.
Old, But Gold
Being a naturally aspirated car, the Dinan stage 2 kit for the M5 E39 hasn’t unlocked a lot more power. It’s a lot easier with today’s turbocharged engines to extract copious amounts of extra oomph. That said, forced induction does dilute the magic experienced with a NA engine, even though turbo-less cars are objectively slower.
The 4.9-liter V8 made about 400 horsepower back in the day, but this one has been tuned to release an additional 10%. With 440 hp going to the rear wheels via a six-speed manual gearbox, it doesn’t get much better than this. Not only does it look great, but the M5 E39 also feels solid even though it’s 22 years old. It’s been well taken care of in the past two decades during which it racked up quite a few miles.
[Source: Beemer Fam / YouTube]
