CarBrandLogos archive · BMW · 2009

BMWX5 M

The moment M stopped being a division that only made cars that went round corners.

Photo: IFCAR · Public domain

The story

A defining chapter in BMW history.

Explore the ideas, engineering and context that shaped the BMW X5 M, then continue into its specifications and place in the marque's lineage.

Origins

In 2009 BMW put the M badge on something two metres tall, and a significant part of the audience took it as a betrayal.

2009 BMW X5 M · IFCAR · Public domain

Design and engineering

The X5 M and its X6 M twin were the first M cars with all-wheel drive and the first with an automatic gearbox as the only option. The 4.4-litre twin-turbocharged V8 made 555 hp, the air suspension and active roll control worked hard to disguise the mass, and the result was genuinely, absurdly quick — quicker point to point than most sports cars, and about as involving as a fast lift.

In production

The commercial logic was not in dispute. M's volumes had been small and its margins thin; the SUVs sold in numbers that funded everything else the division wanted to do, including the cars the purists preferred. Every M SUV since — the X3 M, the X4 M, the XM — descends from the decision taken here.

Legacy

Later generations grew more capable and heavier still. Whether any of them is an M car in the sense the M1 was is an argument that has now run for fifteen years without resolution, and it is not going to be settled by the sales figures, which have never been in question.

Technical specification