designo

In that case, you should have pulled him over and driven the M5 yourself,, cause his launching sucked!!! There is no place for a lousy driver in an M5 buddy! They make us all look bad!

sdg1871

Ha ha. He's not a lousy driver at all. He's an excellent driver actually.

tachyon

From Edmunds road tests ...

2008 550i
0-30 mph 2.2 sec
0-45 mph 3.6 sec
0-60 mph 5.4 sec
0-75 mph 7.9 sec
1/4 mile 13.7 sec @ 104.1 mph
1 ft roll-out 0-60 mph 5.1 sec

2008 M5
0-30 mph 2.3 sec
0-45 mph 3.6 sec
0-60 mph 4.8 sec
0-75 mph 6.6 sec
1/4 mile 12.8 sec @ 115.1 mph
1 ft roll-out 0-60 mph 4.5 sec

I've owned both cars and I think these Edmunds tests accurately reflect the real world performance of these machines. The 550i can get its nose out front for the first few dozen feet ... and then the beast completely overwhelms.

Obviously you need to look at both torque and HP to tell the story: torque tells us how much work can get done ... while HP tells us how quickly that work can be applied. HP rules.

By the way, they tested a 2000 E39 M5 at 0-6 mph in 5.28 sec and the 1/4 mile in 13.75 @ 105.7 mph.

BMWPower06

The fact that edmunds got such a horrible 0-60 time for the M5 reflects in the rest of their data. I myself got a 12.6 in the quarter mile this past weekend, and that was with a bad launch (2.0 sec. 60')

heres what an M5 will really do:

http://www.roadandtrack.com/assets/downloa..._data_panel.pdf

0-30: 1.7
0-40: 2.4

sdg1871

The 0-60 times Edmunds clocked for both cars are slow compared to a number of the car mags.

But what is significant are the relative times reported for the 550 and the M5. The 550 was clocked faster than the M5 from 0-30 and dead even from 0-45. That is entirely consistent with my experiences going from launch vs a M5. Note that as speed builds, the M5 absolutely destroys the 550. This is due to the fact that the M5 does not have loads of low end torque. It appears that with the F10 M5, it will have a truckload of low end torque due to the anticipated switch to the FI engine.

swajames

Tachyon's underlying point remains valid. In any event, Road and Track are notoriously optimistic in their numbers. Their 0-60 time for my 997 S Coupe was 3.9, the lowest of any car magazine, and two or three tenths quicker than the general consensus from all other sources which generally came in a 4.1 to 4.3.

For what it's worth, the 0-60 time on the 550 that Tachyon posted is also one of the slower magazine times - I've seen 4.8 in other magazines. The M5 has got better 0-60 times, but it is the 45-60 segment that is much, much quicker than the 550 and from then on the M5 never looks back.

Either way, comparing different magazine times is typically a rather pointless exercise - different cars, different drivers, different conditions, and different corrections applied for weather and altitude etc. Times from the same source (such as Tachyon posted) are perhaps more reliable points of comparison as there's likely to be at least some consistency in the testing methodology. What's more, I suspect very owners are willing to submit our cars to the kind of abuse needed to wring the very best times out of them. In the real world, why would you be foolish enough to want to try?

designo

That's it... I'm shopping for a 550!

sdg1871

Wanna swap?

Aartsy19

I ran 1/4 mile a few few weeks ago and ran consecutive 12.8's (actually 4 times in a row) and that was with TERRIBLE 60 ft times... something liek 2.1secs+, which is because i had never run before.

I've heard of the e60 M5 doing low 12's 1/4 mile.. something like 12.2-12.4, and 0-60 in 4.1-4.4