The Modern BMW M5 Is A 4-door Beast

I figured it was about time I wrote about another BMW car, and since it’s a car I’ve photographed in real life and one of the first cars I got playing Forza Horizon 4 it’s going to be the BMW M5, BMW’s iconic 4-door performance sedan that is based off the regular 5 series.

One has to keep in mind that a lot of the BMW M cars have been produced over multiple generations and this includes the M5. The M5 that’s in my featured image and is the one I photographed in real life is the 2018 generation (mine was the 2021 facelift specifically) while the M5 I drive in Forza Horizon 4 is the earlier 2012 generation, so consider this as a post about the modern M5 in general.

The BMW M5 has always been up there as one of the top performance sedans, but the modern M5s is when it really started to make a big impression for many including me. For a start the M5 is seriously powerful for a sedan with the 2012 generation powered by a 553 hp twin-turbo V8 engine, 2018 with a similar engine and 600 hp and the M5 Competition variant introduced later increasing the engine power to 617 hp.

I think the M5’s biggest strength however, is it’s adaptability. I’ve seen the M5 used for just about anything in any situation. It can be used for daily city driving, racing, drifting and so on, it can be driven on asphalt or on dirt, it can be modified and tuned as well and there are plenty who are able to tune the M5 to give it even more power. The modern BMW M5 is one of the few cars I can think of that someone can take to a tuner event or an exclusive track meet and still be equally welcomed.

The modern BMW M5 and M5 Competition showed the world how capable performance sedans can be. It is probably why performance sedans are now a pretty big segment that besides the usual counterparts from Merc AMG and Audi RS, has cars like the Porsche Panamera Turbo, Maserati Ghibli Trofeo and Tesla Model S Plaid for example.

Even though the new upcoming generation of the M5 is given a 2025 model year, BMW have already started production for the new M5 and deliveries are expected to start in November 2024. Only time will tell if the new model can live up to the expectations of the previous two generations of the M5.