The first deliveries of the brand new BMW 5 Series will begin in February next year, after the car’s official debut on American soil at the Detroit Auto Show. For those of you interested in getting your hands on the new Bavarian sedan, you need to know that the first models available for orders are the 530i and 540i in the US.
If you’re looking to get a 5er as soon as possible and you live in the US these are the only two options you can pick from to have it delivered as soon as February. The “entry-level” BMW 530i comes, unlike what the name may suggest, fitted with a 2-liter turbocharged 4-cylinder turbocharged engine good for 248 HP and 258 lb-ft of torque. You can have it with all-wheel drive or as a standard RWD model, both versions coming with the 8-speed ZF gearbox as standard.
Acceleration times are split by a 0.2-second difference, the RWD model being slower, reaching 60 mph in 6 seconds. What’s surprising though is that the new cars are limited to a top speed of 130 mph (210 km/h) as standard, reaching the traditional barrier of 155 mph (250 km/h) only if fitted with an optional feature that allows it.
The BMW 540i follows the same recipe, also being limited at 130 mph by the manufacturer. However, the 6-cylinder 3-liter straight six engine under the hood of this model delivers 335 HP and 332 lb-ft of torque, figures familiar from the BMW M140i model, for example. Accelerating to 60 mph takes 4.9 or 4.7 seconds, depending on the kind of traction you go for. All cars come fitted with the 8-speed automatic gearbox as standard too, no matter if you choose the RWD or AWD model.
In March deliveries of two additional model will commence as well so if you don’t mind waiting for another month, you could get the BMW 530e plug-in hybrid or the brand new BMW M Performance model, the BMW M550i xDrive. Fitted with a reworked version of the N63 4.4-liter twin-turbo V8 from the old 550i model, the new M Performance Automobile is now faster than the F10 M5 to 62 mph, reaching the benchmark speed in 4 seconds flat.
