What Makes the BMW M5 Competition Stand Out

It’s Friday night at 9 p.m. and I am just returning from a quick one-day trip down to LA, driving back from the airport in the BMW M5 Competition. I have been up since 5:30 a.m. It has been a long but productive day. I accelerate down the ramp out of the SFO daily parking with the snarl of the M5 V8’s exhaust ricocheting off the walls, head swiftly out onto the 101 with the M5 rapidly accelerating into the slipstream of red lights of the traffic heading up to the city.

The M5 feels comfortable and familiar — the warm glow of blue and red in the instruments, the superbly supportive M Sport seats with the whiff of the Merino leather upholstery, and the excellent ergonomics of the cabin. The M Sport steering wheel is just the right diameter and thickness, presumably honed and refined through what is now six generations of this iconic M car. The placement of the switchgear is intuitive and exactly where you would expect it all to be. Even the red machined aluminum switches for the programmable M performance settings, the paddle shifters, and steering column switchgear are neatly located for ease of cockpit management, as we refer to it in aviation. 

I am listening to the superb fidelity of the Harman Kardon sound system. For some reason I am going through a bit of a country music phase at the moment: Cody Jinks, Colter Wall, and Whiskey Myers — go figure. Lulled by the deep bass and melodic tunes, I am reflecting on my busy day, beginning to relax, and looking forward to the long weekend ahead with the M5 Competition. I glance at the head-up display, and to my surprise, I am doing well over 95mph. This sums up the M5 Competition: It is capable of dispensing the miles with extraordinary, surgical proficiency in a brilliantly functional and luxuriously cossetted package.