The S85 V10: the only naturally aspirated V10 BMW ever built for the road

Published on 22 September 2026

Between 2005 and 2010, BMW sold a family saloon with a five-litre V10 under the bonnet. It happened once, and it almost certainly won't happen again.

The engine is called the S85. Ten cylinders in a V, 4,999 cc, naturally aspirated — no turbo, no supercharger. Air reaches the cylinders through nothing more than the vacuum the pistons create. No other production BMW has ever used this layout. The S85 isn't derived from an existing block either: it was drawn from scratch for this car.

Official figures are 507 hp at 7,750 rpm and 520 Nm of torque at 6,100 rpm. The rev limiter — the electronic ceiling the engine refuses to climb past — sits at 8,250 rpm. For a saloon weighing close to 1.9 tonnes, that's motorcycle territory. Most V8s of the period gave up around 1,500 rpm earlier.

The choice wasn't an engineer's whim. In the mid-2000s BMW was supplying V10 engines in Formula 1, and the M division wanted the connection to be obvious. Several solutions came straight from racing practice: ten individual throttle bodies (one per cylinder, for a sharper response than a single throttle can give), a high compression ratio of roughly 12:1, and a lubrication system designed to cope with hard cornering loads.

The result is a very particular character. The S85 doesn't pull hard low down. You have to go and find the power. Below 4,000 rpm the M5 drives like a slightly soft large saloon. Past 6,000 it becomes a different car: the noise turns hard and metallic, and the acceleration never tails off before the limiter. That long, linear climb, with none of a turbo's sudden shove, is exactly what modern engines no longer do.

Zero to 100 km/h is quoted at around 4.7 seconds for the saloon. Top speed is electronically limited to 250 km/h, as it was on every German performance car of the era. With the optional M Driver's Package, that ceiling was raised to somewhere near 305 km/h.

The SMG III gearbox: the transmission owners can't agree on

Published on 22 September 2026

Seven gears, eleven programmes, no clutch pedal. Twenty years on, nobody has settled whether it was brilliant or simply early.

The SMG III is an ordinary seven-speed manual gearbox with the clutch pedal removed. Hydraulic actuators do the work instead: they disengage the clutch, select the gear and re-engage. It is not an automatic — there's no torque converter — and, crucially, there is only one clutch. Everything else follows from that.

With a single clutch, every shift means a break in torque. The engine has to be disconnected, the gear engaged, the clutch closed again. The SMG III did this about 20 percent faster than the SMG II before it, which was genuinely impressive for 2005. But the pause is still there. On every shift, the car hesitates for a beat.

BMW offered eleven operating programmes under the Drivelogic name: five automatic, six manual, running from gentle to savage. In setting 1 the gearbox shifts smoothly and stays out of the way. In setting 6 it slams gears home hard enough to throw your passengers' heads forward.

This is where opinion splits. Some owners love the aggressive setting — the kick in the back is part of the theatre. Others can't forgive how the car behaves in traffic. At low speed, in queues, manoeuvring into a parking space, the SMG III is hesitant and jerky. It was built for performance, not for the commute.

Then there's reliability. The hydraulic system — pump, pressure accumulator, hoses, solenoids — ages badly. Faults tend to show up somewhere after 80,000 to 120,000 km, sometimes sooner on a hard-driven car. Parts are expensive and the number of workshops willing to tackle the job keeps shrinking.

A six-speed manual did exist, but only in North America, from the 2007 model year onwards. It was never sold in Europe. It is now the version buyers chase hardest, and the price gap between the two transmissions keeps widening.

Rod bearings: the weakness that haunts the used market

Published on 22 September 2026

It's the first question any buyer asks, ahead of the mileage. And it's a part that costs a few hundred euros.

A rod bearing is a metal half-shell sitting between the connecting rod and the crankshaft. It never really touches the journal: a pressurised film of oil, a few microns thick, keeps them apart. As long as that film holds, the part barely wears. When it breaks down, metal runs on metal, and the damage comes fast.

On the S85 that film is fragile for a specific reason: the factory clearance is very tight. Specialists measuring these engines report figures around 0.025 mm, where common practice would suggest roughly double that. Less clearance means less oil flowing through. Add an engine that spins to 8,250 rpm and puts enormous loads through the rods, and you get a wear item where owners expected a lifetime part.

Reported failures cluster somewhere between 80,000 and 130,000 km, but the spread is wide. Some engines have gone much earlier; others pass 200,000 km without trouble. Driving style, maintenance discipline and above all oil change intervals matter enormously. An engine that spends its life on short cold journeys suffers far more than one regularly brought up to temperature.

The classic symptom is a dull metallic knock at idle with the engine warm. The trouble is that it arrives late. By the time you can hear it, the damage is usually done. That's why the community treats replacement as preventive maintenance rather than repair: you change the bearings before they let go, typically before 100,000 to 120,000 km.

In practice the cost isn't the parts, it's the labour. The sump has to come off and all ten rods have to be reached. Quotes run into the thousands. Set that against a destroyed engine, which runs into the tens of thousands.

The effect on the market is straightforward. A service file with a recent bearing invoice is worth more than low mileage with no history. Buying an E60 M5 without written proof means budgeting for the job from day one.

The Power button: why the car only gives you 400 hp at startup

Published on 22 September 2026

You turn the key, and 107 horsepower stay in the drawer. Nothing is broken. BMW meant it that way.

On the centre console of the E60 M5 there's a button marked "Power". Whatever you selected yesterday, the car always starts in P400 mode: the engine management caps output at 400 hp. One press unlocks P500 and the full 507 hp. A third setting, P500 Sport, keeps the same output but makes the throttle pedal noticeably sharper.

The thinking behind it is simple. A 507 hp saloon, driven every day by someone who isn't a racing driver, on wet roads or in town, is a lot of car. P400 softens the response and leaves a margin. It also trims fuel consumption slightly, though nobody buys an M5 for that.

Technically, the restriction isn't achieved by shutting down cylinders. The ECU limits how far the ten throttle bodies open and adjusts the mapping accordingly. The V10 runs normally; it simply breathes less. That's why switching from P400 to P500 is instant and seamless — nothing mechanical changes.

The fact that the setting isn't remembered when you switch off annoyed plenty of owners. Every journey starts restricted. Some treat it as a ritual — pressing Power is part of the pleasure. Others find it patronising, and there are now coding solutions that let the car wake up in P500 directly.

It's worth keeping the difference in perspective. Below 4,000 rpm the two modes feel close. Those missing 107 horsepower live at the top of the rev range, in territory you rarely reach on a public road. Plenty of owners admit to driving in P400 most of the time and only switching when the road deserves it.

The button says something about its era. In 2005, a saloon that asked its driver to confirm they really wanted all the power was staging the performance. Today that staging happens through drive modes and screens.

Bangle's design: hated at launch, admired today

Published on 22 September 2026

An online petition once demanded that BMW's design chief be sacked. Twenty years later, the same shapes get held up as an example.

When the E60 5 Series was shown in 2003, the reaction was harsh. The proportions looked odd, the boot looked bolted on, the headlights cut into the wings and the kidney grille had shrunk. The blame landed on Chris Bangle, then head of design for the group. A petition went round the internet calling for him to go.

The detail people miss is that Bangle didn't draw the E60. He signed it off. The lines came from a young Italian designer on his team, Davide Arcangeli. Bangle absorbed the criticism because he was the face of the new direction.

That direction has a name: flame surfacing. Instead of large smooth panels joined by clean edges, curved surfaces are made to intersect, producing creases and reflections that shift with the light. The car doesn't look the same at midday and at dusk. For a German saloon, where restraint had been the rule, this was unusual.

On the M5 the treatment works particularly well. Wider wings, four exhaust outlets and specific wheels give the car a stance the ordinary 5 Series lacks, without shouting about it. This is a car that doesn't announce what it is. Many owners name that discretion as their first reason for buying one.

Opinion turned through comparison. The F10 that replaced the E60 in 2010 was deliberately safe: smoother, more expected, and it disappeared into the traffic. Next to it, the E60 stopped looking strange and started looking distinctive. What had been held against it — the boldness, the visual discomfort — became the reason to remember it.

It's a familiar pattern in car design. The shapes that unsettle people at launch are usually the ones that last. The reassuring ones age without anyone noticing.