Price:
£45 030 (about R540 000, but SA actual prices only at launch in February).
Top speed:
250km/h, 0-100km/h 6.3sec.
Fuel consumption:
About nine litres/100km.
CO2 emissions:
209g/km
Best for:
Discerning Americans.
Also worth considering?
BMW 5 Series estate, BMW X5, Mercedes R Class.
Everybody knows what a BMW is. No other brand has been honed as carefully it, no other badge conveys as precisely as the blue-and-white quartered circle what the car that bears it stands for.
But it wasn't always so... back in the 1950's and '60's the company's range was much more diverse than today; there was the Isetta, for example, a bubble car based on an Italian design, and the 700, which was broadly comparable with the British Hillman Imp.
It's as well to approach the new 5 Series Gran Turismo with that broader, longer-term perspective of what a BMW can be because this new car is unlike anything else the Bavarian manufacturer has made before.
Like the Isetta, the new BMW 535i Executive Gran Turismo is, in a sense, a bubble car but while in the case of the Isetta the word bubble referred to the car's large glass area and bulbous form, in the Gran Turismo it describes the overheated economic conditions that produced it.
Automakers are always doing this sort of thing - optimistically cooking-up expensive supercars and niche products in the good times that then end up being launched during a slump.
The 4 Series Gran Turismo in 530d, 535i and 550i guise will be launched in South Africa in February 2010. Local prices will be announced then.
The GT is such a niche car; it's aimed at potential buyers who find a sedan or estate such as a BMW 5 Series impractical but who don't want to be seen in a big SUV such as BMW's X5. I thought Mercedes had already proved this niche didn't exist with its R Class crossover but the 5 GT turns out to be rather different.
It's a commodious hatchback that puts a lot of emphasis on the comfort of rear passengers. Its execution is superb; from its beautiful cabin to its slick eight-speed gearbox, the GT is an immensely polished and practical product.
However it's not very sporty and it doesn't look like it should be carrying a BMW badge, a feeling that not even the marvellously powerful straight-six engine in the model I tested can dispel.
Will the 5 GT succeed? Good as it is, I'm not sure how many Europeans will buy one. I suspect, however, that the Americans, who like something big and practical, and are far less impressed than people across the Atlantic by fussy notions of what premium brands stand for, could develop quite an appetite for it. - The Independent, London