2025 BMW M5 First Drive: Forget The Weight, This Hybrid Rips

The BMW M5 is Bavarian Motor Work's biggest, heaviest, baddest, and meanest hybridized sport sedan. For over four decades, it has occupied the top of the strata of German sedans and set the benchmark in its segment of huge, fast European cars. Prior to this week, I had never driven a BMW M-car, much less its king, the M5. So when BMW invited me to come down to the home of all that is BMW in America, Spartanburg, South Carolina, I was eager to see what all the fuss was about. 

As car enthusiasts know, whenever you add a consonant to the name of a vehicle, it's serious. Letters like R, S, T, and for BMW, M, mean something significant. In the case of the M5, it means a 700-plus horsepower sedan with specs that would make a fighter jet take notice and color options that would give a professional fashion designer night terrors. Executive sedans like the BMW 5 Series and the Mercedes E-Class are mostly subtle exercises in restraint. The M5, on the other hand, is about as subtle as an F-4 Phantom. 

Before I explain what it's like to strap myself to the cruise missile that is the M5, it worth explaining what the newest generation of M5 is. Mechanically, the 2025 BMW M5 is a plug-in hybrid sedan and can travel upwards of 25 miles on electric power only. However, it is very much not in the same league as a Toyota Prius Prime, as the M5's electric motor produces 194 horsepower by itself. Combined  with a twin-turbo 4.4-liter V8, the M5 throws down 717 horsepower. All that power travels through an eight-speed automatic transmission to all four wheels. 

BMW's monster M-car completes the 0-60 sprint in a scant 3.4 seconds and can reach a top speed of 190 miles per hour. That's a marvel considering the fact it weighs an extraordinary 5,390 pounds. That's more than twice the weight of a Mazda Miata and only 190 pounds lighter than a Chevy Tahoe. It's essentially a Dodge Charger Hellcat that went to college in Munich and got an engineering degree. 

Upon arriving in Spartanburg, I was greeted with a buffet of different M5s to choose from in a variety of colors. I, being from Baltimore and a fan of the Baltimore Ravens NFL team, chose the M5 clad in "Daytona Violet Metallic": a shade of purple that does its best at being visible from satellite and being "very purple," according to my editor. Although it's not as flashy as the M5 finished in Isle of Man Green, or as sinister as the sedans finished in matte "Frozen Deep Grey," the purple M5 had absolutely no problem garnering attention. Even if the color wasn't turning heads, the M5 is loud enough to wake the dead, not to mention roughly the length (and weight) of a German Navy Baden-Württemberg-class frigate. 

Alex Hevesy/SlashGear

After pairing my phone to the car and playing a track from the appropriately German rock band Scorpions, I set out for a road test. You might think that over 700 horsepower on tap would make the M5 an un-drivable monster that's only capable of getting speeding tickets and/or winning races on the track, but that couldn't be farther from the truth.

BMW did a masterful job in making the M5 easy to handle and live with. I never felt like the car was getting away from me, or even that it was too eager to flex its muscles. It was perfectly content sitting in traffic and, given the Merino leather interior and Harmon Kardon sound system, I shared the same demeanor. 

However, when the traffic cleared up, and it was safe to go out for a sprint, the M5 didn't disappoint and took off like a F-14 Tomcat from the deck of an aircraft carrier. A simple text description doesn't do the M5 justice with regards to how absurdly fast it can get moving. 

BMW

While the huge grimacing grille and muscular lines do their best to make the M5 as aerodynamic as possible, I got the feeling that the M5 was able to achieve such great feats of speed and acceleration by simply punching the air out of the way and bullying inertia to comply through sheer might (what you might call the AMG S63 E Performance strategy). Although it was not my intention, I'm sure a huge purple sedan moving at speeds that didn't seem possible was a terrifying sight to see approaching in the rear-view mirror. I was, for a short period of time, the apex predator in the area. To misquote Futurama, "Why doesn't the M5, the largest of the M-cars, not simply eat the other cars?" 

After teasing the M5 with the limitations of public roads, I finished our time together with a jaunt on BMW's track at its Performance Center. It was there that the M5 was able to let its hair down and properly violate noise laws. I am not a professional race car driver by any definition of the term, nor do I claim to be. That being said, the M5 ate through corners and straights with relative ease, partly through the fact that all four wheels contribute to steering and mostly due to sheer power. 

As I learned over my very short racing career, any obstacle experienced with the M5 on the track can be overcome by just putting your foot down. It's entirely at home on the track and extremely composed in a way that puts other cars to shame. 

Ironically, it was almost boring on the track: not because it was slow, but because BMW designed it in a way that leaves most people probably incapable of pushing the sedan to what it's truly capable of. It was entirely free of drama, and despite the howling engine and whistling turbos, the track was a walk in the park for the M5.

You'd be entirely correct in assuming that the 2025 BMW M5 is expensive. It starts at an eye-watering $119,500. The purple-tastic paint color adds $5,000 to that. With all the extras the M5 I drove was equipped with, the price rose to $146,225. Das ist eine Menge Geld. While I only had the chance to drive the M5 Sedan, BMW brought the newly announced M5 Touring wagon. If you want the gearhead cultural cache of a 717 horsepower wagon, it costs $121,500.

All told, the 2025 BMW M5 is an absolutely absurd vehicle. BMW somehow, through its unique brand of M-powered magic, made a vehicle that's able to be a staid and sedate commuter while simultaneously possessing enough power to eat most other cars on the track or a highway. It's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde except Mr. Hyde has encyclopedic knowledge of every racetrack in Germany. There are few vehicles around that impart as much power to the driver than the M5 and, even a few days later, all I can really think about is hopping back into the driver's seat for another lap.