It’s unfortunate really. Gone are the days when you could park a BMW 3, 5 and 7 series next to each other and the differences would be as obvious as white and brown bread. The obvious difference was size, but metal designs were worlds apart, and interiors plushier with more gizmos the higher you went up in the badge numbers game.
Sadly this no longer seems the case, with body styles and interiors almost identical – spy shots and proposed sketches suggest that the new Three will follow in the design footsteps of the recently-launched Five and Seven. Different lengths of the same piece of string seems to be the prevailing thinking in terms of the Bavarian’s approach to their sedans, with a lot of badge identity being lost in the process.
This 550i road test started with me getting out of the driver’s seat of our long-term test car, a 730d, and I kid you not when I say that I had to constantly remind myself that I was in a Five and not a Seven. Beside spec-level and sprint capabilities, the cars felt almost identical and interior-wise hailed from the carbon-copy school of design. In fact, I almost accidently put diesel in the petrol-powered 550i, so similar did it feel to our slightly larger limo diesel burner. And most people I chatted to thought the 550i was a Seven at first glance. Not that the 550i does anything wrong. It gets a mother of an engine in the form of a twin-turbo 4.4-litre V8 pushing 300kW and 600Nm (I know, the 550i badge doesn’t make sense; old school would suggest a 5-litre). It’s the same engine found in the X5M and X6M (but there it makes a gutsier 408kW and 680Nm), and is almost a certainty to power the next M5 in tweaked form. I think it’s also the very reason that Merc’s talking about tweaking its 5.5-litre twin-turbo V8 (which debuted in the just-facelifted CL range) for the next E63 (a major rival to the M5).
The 550i’s performance figures are astounding too. We strapped in our test equipment at altitude and managed a not-too-shabby 5.3 seconds for the 0-100km/h sprint (we are talking about 1.8 tons of car here), and nailed the quarter-mile in a just-as-impressive 13.5 seconds. Launch control as in the M5 is not on offer here, but there’s enough power to generate plenty of off-the-line wheelspin with the stability control switched off.
And unlike the Seven series range, in which only the 760Li gets the new 8-speed automatic gearbox, the entire Five series range has eight cogs. On the open road in eighth at 100km/h the engine’s revving at just 1 100rpm. Average consumption though, even with so many gears, was a heavy-ish 14.5l/100km. Cruising around in the 550i is magic carpet ride stuff, and like I said earlier, is just about identical to its larger Seven sibling – they share the same platform after all.
The only real difference I noted was that with the Seven’s Dynamic Damper and Adaptive Drive system you have the option of Comfort, Normal, Sport, and Sport+; the 550i lacked the Comfort setting and meant that that extra-soft ride wasn’t available. One thing is obvious though, the upcoming M5’s suspension will need a fair whack of stiffening and tightening to tame apexes, as the 550i’s was definitely more on the limo-spec side.
Plusses of sharing Seven DNA is that the Five gets four-wheel steering, which means the back wheels turn fractionally to ensure a tighter turning circle and easier parking manoeuvres. And all the latest (some optional) high-tech gizmos are there, including technology like night vision, 10.2-inch display screen, lane departure warning, and active cruise control, among many, many others. The new Five has the longest wheelbase in the segment, with a 13mm improvement in rear knee room compared to its predecessor, but it’s still a little tighter in the back seat than you’d expect for a car nearly five metres long. Boot space lives up to expectations though.
Other small areas I thought were overlooked included the bootlid not having an auto close button, which you’d expect in a range-topping Five as standard fare, and our car was specced with beige carpets and interior – “perfect” for the muddy and rainy December we’ve just had. The low-profile runflat tyres are also an ongoing problem with the potholes on our roads; I managed a squash ball-sized bubble on the front right tyre after hitting a pothole somewhere in Joburg.
VERDICT:
I can’t see the sales of the Five not cutting into that of the Seven, especially if you consider that a 750i costs R1 171 483, or a whopping R325 966 more than a 550i (which has the same engine and outputs).
The new Five has edged closer to the Seven and further away from the Three Series (perhaps they should have called the new Five a 7-series light), but be that as it may, the 550i is a solid and well-built powerhouse.