2025 BMW M5 Review: Right Car, Wrong Badge

This is the one we’ve been waiting for, then. It’s probably no understatement to describe the arrival of the G90 BMW M5 as one of the most anticipated of the decade and for a few reasons.

There’s the hybrid powertrain for a start, with this the first M5 – and ignoring the XM because we all should, the first properly relevant M car – to integrate an electric element. Because of that, this is comfortably the heaviest M5 of them all, weighing in at 2.4 tonnes.

Another ‘-est’ is biggest, although that’s really no surprise given the G90 is based on the biggest 5 Series yet. With its beefcake swollen arches and macho bumpers, the M5 measures 5.1m long and 2m wide – which for context, is about the same footprint as a Range Rover.

Lost in all of that is a big ‘most’, with this BMW M5 the most powerful car to wear that badge yet. Standalot, 578bhp and 553lb ft of torque comes from a familiar S63 4.4-litre twin-turbo V8 but, combine that with an electric motor integrated within the eight-speed ZF ‘box, and those figures stand at 717bhp and 738lb ft.

Naturally, you’d want those figures to make it one more ‘-est’ –  the fastest. On paper though, no, the G90 will crack 0-62mph in 3.5 seconds. Which is to say two-tenths slower than the F90 Competition it directly replaces. Never mind the half-second gap to the CS, which is around 80bhp down.

Fortunately, though, none of that actually matters when you’re sat in the car, steering wheel in hand and foot about to be mashed to the floor — it’s a different sort of fast to the M5s that preceded the G90.

Whereas the F90 CS felt like it was placing you directly atop the afterburners of an F22 Raptor fighter jet, the G90 leaves you convinced that rather than you covering the ground, its immense torque and power are gradually accelerating the rotation of the earth underneath its wheels.

You know you’re accelerating at an immense pace, but the sheer mass and size leave you a little isolated from the sensation of speed. That’s not to say it’s a bad thing, just different. It’s not just that initial launch either, as you push through its eight ratios, the consistency of its pace is immense, as is the seamless relationship between the V8 and electric motor. 

Truthfully though, it doesn’t corner like we’ve come to expect an M5 to over the years. Traction from the xDrive all-wheel drive system is sublime, its Hankook tyres are an impressive display of engineering and the addition of rear axle steering aids agility, but none can cheat the laws of physics.

There’s simply no getting around the fact this is a very big, very heavy car. It’ll take corners without much in the way of body roll but there is a sense that the car constantly wants to push itself wide rather than attack apexes or get very sideways, and despite the immense size of the optional carbon ceramic brakes on our test car, it still takes a lot of stopping.

All the while, because of how big and isolated you feel, it doesn’t really inspire you to drive it hard either. It’s moved into the realm of a big luxury cruiser rather than a sports car that happens to have lots of practicality. It’s a new way of thinking about what a BMW M5 brings.

The ride is very comfortable at a cruise despite using adaptive dampers rather than opting for air suspension as may be expected of a car this size. It’s absolutely loaded with useful and well-functioning driver assistance tech that takes the strain out of those boring 70mph motorway journeys, and then there’s the electric element of this.

It makes the M5 feel properly grown up now. It gives you an option of starting the car silently so as to not wake your neighbours up with a snarling V8 on those days you have to leave the house at 5am and its 18.6kWh battery pack offers real-world range of well over 40 miles of EV-only driving so it’ll be efficient to run when you don’t need 717bhp. While these may not matter to most of us who bleed internal combustion, to people who can actually afford an M5 that starts at £110,000 and who are probably a lot later in life, it will.

This brings us to one, boring to explain but impossible-to-overlook aspect of the new BMW M5 for UK buyers. Hear us out on this.

Because of its quoted CO2 being less than 50g/km (yeah, right), it sits in an eight per cent benefit-in-kind tax band for company cars. That means, if you’re a taxpayer in the 40% bracket (which you will be if your company is willing to buy you an M5), it’ll cost you about a third of the outgoing M5 to run – and comfortably less than an M3. For the most full-fat of M cars.

If you readjust your perspective of M-car hierarchy then, the G90 begins to make sense. The M2 occupies a space the M3 once did, which then goes into the gap left by the M5s of old. If the G90 BMW M5 was wearing an M7 badge instead, I suspect none of the weight or hybridisation would actually matter to anyone.

In short, it’s not a great car by the existing definition of the BMW M5. Yet, in its own right, the G90 is a sublime thing. Oh, and don't forget, there's a Touring coming...