From the BMW E12 gen 5-series that came in 1972, till the G30 5-series that came in 2017, it gave its buyers an experience of a luxury saloon that has a dual personality disorder, like on weekdays it can be your daily office-home-office chauffer driven car, but on the weekends it can give you the ultimate driving pleasure when you unleash the true potential of it, this happens because of BMW’s perfect tuning between the engine, the wheels and the gearbox, and with sheer luxury and performance, the 5-series is a looker, it got a simpler yet elegant look that follows the BMW’s design philosophy, and it has always been an important car for the German maker. Today BMW has revealed its 8th generation called the G60 5-series, with the introduction of the i5, it gets a full electric powertrain as well.
The front look of the new G60 5-series looks fresh and decent as compared to some current BMWs in the line-up, but seeing the front end of the new 5-series, it still looks unnecessarily over-designed in pictures, the design of the grill has gotten a bit large, not as large as the new 4-series, that has a large sensor in the middle of it, which makes it a look bit odd, with the M variants you get the front grill all blacked out, and the front grill also has a glowing effect like the new 7-series, the headlights looks similar to the one on the X5, but has a kink between the DRLs, and you get black elements on the new front bumper that features blacked-out intake system underneath the grill and blacked out air curtains on either side of the front bumper.
From the side it gets conventional door handles instead of loop door handles and BMW is doing this change with every other new or upcoming BMW, gets blacked-out side skirts, and as standard, the G60 5-series gets traditional-looking ORVMs, but with the M variants you get M style mirror caps for the ORVMs, BMW will offer 19” to 21” alloy wheel sizes for the new 5 with new designs, but when coming to rear, it doesn’t look like the part of the whole car but has sleeker taillights with a blacked-out diffuser treatment below the rear bumper similar to the M340i LCI, and talking about the boot carrying capacity, the new 5-series has 520L of boot space and the i5 has 490L, because of the motor is mounted on the rear axel.
Until now BMW has disclosed the power figures of the new 520i and the all electric i5, the 520i is powered by the 2.0L 4-cylinder turbo petrol, that will put out 187hp and 310Nm of torque, driving the rear wheels only via an 8-speed automatic transmission, coming to the i5, the base i5 eDrive 40 is powered by one electric motor powered by an 81kWh battery driving the rear wheels, puts out 335hp and 400Nm of peak torque, and gives the ranges of 476km-582km on a single charge, with the boost mode during the launch it puts out 430Nm of peak torque, which help it to do 0-100km in about 6.1 seconds, and if that’s not enough powerful for you, then there is the i5 M60, which has the same 80kWh battery, but with dual motor setup combined with XDrive 4-wheel-drive system, that puts out 595hp and 820Nm of peak torque, which is 70Nm more than the F90 M5 Competition has, and it provides the range of 454km-515km on a single charge, but it still generating 70Nm more than the F90 M5 Competition, it can only manage to do 0-100km in about 3.8 seconds.
Surely, the new BMWs got controversial with the exterior looks, but that’s not the story on the inside, cause BMW is leading with their magnificent looking interior design with their new line-up of cars, and the new 2023 5-series follows the same interior formula, it gets new steering inspired from the new 7-series, behind the steering wheel Is the giant curve display with twin-screen set-up, where the 12.3” is the driver’s instrument display and 14.9″ is the infotainment system based on the latest BMW Operating System 8.5, which includes Android Auto and Apple Car Play as standard, it also has Amazon Alexa connectivity to have the access of other smart features, and you can also access Youtube to stream videos as well, and the most coolest features of them all is that, it features an in-built gaming console, where you can play different racing sport, racing and arcade games, you also get wireless charging as standard, and BMW has also fitted the smart ambient light borrowed from the 7-series, that can be changed to M colours in the i5 M60i.
Speaking of the upholstery, BMW offers regular leather upholstery for the cabin, but for the serious environmentalists, BMW offers faux leather upholstery as well, called the Veganza with the G60 5-series, and you can choose different interior trims from aluminium to carbon fibre with the i5 M60, with the i5 M60 you also get the interior layout in the M-sport theme and colours, and you can also opt for a big panoramic sunroof instead of a traditional if you need more air inside the cabin.
As an overall package, BMW has done a good job with the new G60 5-series, design could be a subjective thing with the new-gen 5-series, but gotta say it has got lots of upgrades that its current competitors are not offering.
