'02 BMW M5, V8 5.0

Tristan, you are the man. A great car that drives exactly the way to described it. They are so easy to drive but it's soooo easy to get in trouble as well. I love them.

Very nice. I ran one for 18 months or so before the RS4.

So much character and I really enjoyed it for the most part. I'm not a fan of the vague steering and the brakes are adequate at best but wonderful balance and Schizophrenic character were intoxicating.

Fastest I've been on the road was in it as well at a GPS indicated 150mph on the Autobahn. It was busy so I had to back off but it had plenty left.

Must dig out some pics.

Best of luck with it.

I'd highly recommend the dinan short shift kit and the reduced height shift knob as a mod. Also, the standard exhaust is too quiet.

Absolutely awesome cars! I had a Le Mans blue one for a year and it's the only car I really regret selling, as said they are so docile and easy to drive but prod it a bit and the car goes f**kin mental, I found I had to turn the traction control off if I really wanted to drive mine as it was too intrusive and yes, the steering isn't particularly accurate but if I had the chance of a brand new M5 or an e39 M5 it would have to be another e39. Again, as said, it has all the ingredients for a proper driver's car, big N/A V8 at the front, manual gearbox in the middle, LSD at the back and one of the best chassis you'll ever experience in a big saloon car. Saying that, they have a very good chassis full stop. I've got a 540i now (over there<<!) and whilst being a very good car it's no match for the M5.

I'll use this an excuse to show off my old one;

I'm lucky that it's not a daily, I've a workvan and an ordinary diesel Golf. Also got secure, safe, dry and warm storage for it. Agree about the T/c, to press on you need it off.
Since I got it last year I put about 2500 miles on it before being "SORN'd" in November. It was in pretty good shape, but I'm quite picky, so spent many evenings making it better.
Things like getting the illuminated gearknob lighting up again, it had a bust LED.
Replacing dodgy parking sensors.
Cleaning and feeding the leather where tired.
Stripping the headlights and replacing the cracked adjusters inside.
Obviously all oils, filters, plugs etc. One plug had a cracked insulator!

The VANOS rattles a little on idle, like most of them, and some of the pixels are dead on the instrument cluster, and there's a faint vibration in the brakes, all to be sorted before April.
I'd also like to get an Oem type reversing camera working, and get the original Handsfree working.

I'm wrestling with the idea of modding it...... My head says no, my heart says, Hell Yeah!