I can already tell this is going to be a s**t show. Hi Floatplane and welcome to LMG Whips.
This is my 2006 BMW M5.
As Doug Demiro put it, the best car you should never own.
I probably disagree with a little bit of it, but I can see where he's coming from at least.
Let's start with the best and admittedly worst part of this car, the engine.
This is BMW's S85 5.0-liter V10 engine exclusive to the E60 M5 and E63 E64 M6.
It's what takes this otherwise admittedly boring bulbous,
crisp-angled E60 chassis and makes it into something that is actually seriously cool.
A sedan that is as fast and as crazy as a Lamborghini, if you will.
By default, it makes 507 horsepower. It's tuned up a little bit and it sounds incredible, sort of.
I actually kind of wanted to sell the thing. I've had it for two years now.
When I bought it, it was just so tame. There's barely any exhaust note, there's barely any induction noise.
So some minor modifications like a carbon fiber plenum, a little bit beefier intake system and an exhaust.
Turn it from old man fast car to like old young man fast car.
I guess if that makes any sense. When it works, it really is an awesome engine.
The sound is there, the throttle response is there, the power is there.
It might not be the torquiest engine in the world, given its kind of small displacement,
but when you're up there at like 5000 RPM, 6000 RPM,
and the Vanos kicks in, which is kind of like VTEC, and your tires break loose at 6000 RPM, it's pretty special.
It's got just crazy legs. Like this car can do 205 miles per hour when it's being limited
or something crazy like that. But when it works, it's kind of the key piece there.
I'm sure if you've seen any videos on this car at all or read an article
or even are just like car scene adjacent, I'm sure you've heard about the reliability issues.
How many times has this engine broken down on you, Jake? This one's only broken down on me once.
It's kind of low mileage. We'll talk more about that later. But I have lots of friends that have them,
and their experience is not so good as mine.
There's a kind of a laundry list of things that will break on this car. You've got throttle actuators, you've got idle control valves,
you've got a high pressure Vanos line, you've got a high pressure Vanos pump, you've got rod bearings, you've got ionic modules,
you've got, what else do you got? I don't know. That's pretty much the main ones that go, I guess.
Oh, right, the transmissions. I think that that's pretty much it for the engine.
There are more for the transmission, but we'll talk about that when we're in the car, I guess.
This car's actually only ever broken down on me once. It was the throttle actuators,
which is one of those issues you've probably heard of.
Funnily enough, I was talking to my friend while driving the car like,
man, I should probably replace those preventatively.
But maybe I got another 10, 20,000 kilometers before they go.
Parked the car, went inside, took a shower to go to the thing I was going to.
Came back, started the car, check engine light.
Scan it, throttle actuators. I don't have any other explanation other than I jinxed it,
but it's important to frame it properly. What other cars do you get an engine like this?
There's a VW, V10 diesel. I think there was an S6 or an S8 that also had a V10,
but it's not as cool as this one. It's crazy and if you want crazy, you kind of have to pay to maintain crazy.
At least a lot of the things, you spend a few thousand dollars and replace it
and generally you're good. You replace the rod bearings with ones that have a larger gap
and that kind of solves the problem. You upgrade the throttle actuators and that kind of solves the problem.
Maybe I'm just too on the Kool-Aid, but it's worth it.
Forget two doors. How about four doors?
And not just any four doors. I mean, there are like grand coupes and stuff that have four doors
but aren't really comfortable, but I'm six foot.
I've got leg room. This seat is set how I usually sit in the front.
So let's say there's a six foot driver in the front and six foot Jake in the back.
I've got lots of leg room. I've got lots of headroom.
It's a really, really comfortable car. And to have a really, really comfortable car
that you can have like four people in here on a road trip
with, you know, 500 plus horsepower and crazy noises.
It's kind of amazing. What else exists that does this?
I don't know. Oh, look, I even got like, oh, you want some cup holders?
Look at how comfy I am. Very comfy. Holy s***, there's storage back here.
You didn't know that? I've never really like been in the back of this car, obviously.
No, I didn't know there was also storage. I mean, this is a Canadian car.
So there's ski pass through back here. You put your skis through from the back.
If you want to, you know, take your M5 up a mountain.
But no, I didn't know about the storage too.
You got climate control too. What? Oh, wow. This is pretty lame.
Hey, I mean, some four doors don't have that. I mean, it's basic, but it works.
Mind you, I mean, this car is just basic in general. It actually has zero options, not even one.
Wait, really? There's no executive pack. Yeah, I don't know. It's like the stripper spec E60 M5.
There's no, there's no executive package or shades.
I don't even have comfort access, like the keyless start and keyless entry.
You could get heated rear seats. Don't have that.
You could get like split fold front seats. Don't have that.
But luckily in Canada, the Alcantara headliner,
it's like the fancy suede stuff, is standard. So all E60s came with it.
If you get in an American E60, it usually just has a cloth headliner,
unless it's like a really high spec one, which I appreciate the suede headliner is.
This is the fun spot. Being a base model, there's a lot of changes in the front
that are different to like 95% of E60 M5.
You got to remember, this is like an M5. It's a five series. It's kind of a luxury car.
So usually when people bought them, they put a bunch of different options on them,
like active bolsters. This car does have the inflatable bolsters in each seat.
So you can kind of make the car hug you a little bit more. But on most of them, they also have active bolsters,
which means as you go around corners, the bolsters will inflate or deflate on either side
to kind of like lean you into the corner a little bit more,
support you a little more, so you don't lean. It's just, it was like 2005 when they developed that technology.
So there's probably like a quarter or half second delay.
So you're already partway in the corner, and then the bolster inflates, it's truly awful.
And I don't know anyone that has one of these cars with that feature that actually uses it,
except for one guy, but he's crazy. I also don't have a heads up display,
which I don't really care about. Unlike the E9X M3, which is very similar.
It's kind of like a stripped down version of this engine, but everything else is kind of in the same vein.
You can't get this in a single hump. So every E60 M5 has iDrive,
which is like the navigation screen. That's because a bunch of the climate control
and other like weird carb settings and control features
are built into the iDrive. And there's no other way to change them.
For instance, there's no button here to change
if you want the air blowing on your face or from the center of answer at your feet.
It's all in the iDrive, which means if it breaks, you can't control those things.
So you just have to have one. And that means the stripper spec, you know, still has at least some kind of tech things.
But I like not having a lot of tech. Those other features like the heads up display,
they usually just end up breaking. And I like my car to be proper.
So my brain wouldn't let me not fix it, which means I would just be wasting money
on stupid crap I don't care about. Other fun things in the interior
include the super weird kind of janky cup holders. They do at least work
unlike the previous generation five series, the E39, which I think in Europe never had cup holders.
And then they were like, Oh, the North Americans need cup holders. And they put these like two little dinky.
They're not even cup holders. It's like a little, a little hand that comes out
when you open it and you put your drink and it holds the drink like here.
Say this is the bottom of the drink. That's where it holds it on the drink. So it basically does nothing.
So I'm glad that they're there, but they are shitty. And actually I've already broken this one once
and then I broke it again, like a couple of weeks ago. You see that's not supposed to stick up and it doesn't close.
Another sick part is the trunk space. I mean, just look at this.
You could probably fit like six golf bags or like even a human in here.
You know, funnily enough,
I didn't have enough seats in my car at one point when I was picking up some friends.
And instead of making a second trip, my friend was like, screw it. I'll just sit in the back.
We were on a dirt road with lots of bumps. So he was in the back of here like...
Back here, you can see the other modifications I made. I traded some dude, my stock mufflers
for this Eisenman race plus some cash on top. It's cool because it's an original one.
It's like 2007 Eisenman race with the oval tips.
And then I have a Rogue Engineering stainless X pipe, which just deletes the stock resonator.
Fully catted otherwise because I don't like my car to smell like shit.
So thanks for watching. If you like this type of content, hit the like button down below and maybe we'll make more.
I have many modifications I would like to make. And other terrible BMWs we could make more videos about.
That one blows up too.