DriveTribe has been on a bit of a mission, lately, to get their E61 BMW M5 Touring in tip-top shape. Since they’ve had it, they’ve service the hell out of it, giving it new rod bearings, new transmission fluid, a new Eventuri intake, and even a proper detail with PPF (paint protection film). As far as E61 M5 Tourings go, DT’s is pretty damn nice looking. However, as the resident DriveTribe curmudgeon, James May gave it a good roasting.
As BMW fans, it’s hard not to love the E61 M5 Touring. It’s a 500 horsepower, V10-powered wagon that revs to 8,250 rpm and makes one of the best engine/exhaust noises of any super sedan/wagon in history. What’s not to love? Well, if you’re James May, quite a lot, actually.
To be fair, when you take your blue and white-tined spectacles off, and look at the E61 M5 Touring objectively, it does seem like an utterly foolish car to own. The very heart and soul of the car, its screaming V10 engine, is heinously unreliable and costs a fortune to maintain. The gearbox mounted to that engine, a frustrating single-clutch automated manual, is terrible to use most of the time, due to its jerky shifts and dimwitted software. And it gets worse fuel economy than May’s Ferrari 458 Speciale.
All of those points are incredibly valid and it shows that even cars with huge enthusiast fanbases aren’t always good cars to own. It’s easy to love and praise cars on the internet, as fans of the brand, but when it actually comes to putting your money down on them, things can change quite a bit. Is it worth owning an E61 M5 Touring, with all of those aforementioned issues, just to have a V10-powered wagon? Probably not but that won’t stop some BMW enthusiasts from doing so anyway.
