On the subject of active roll suspension, Car and Driver wrote:

"Once the car is bent into a turn, confidence builds, but when traveling in a straight line, the 535i nervously feints after every irregularity in the road. Placing the car near the outside stripe on the pavement takes more faith than it should. This, of course, is a problem present in all 5-series models, regardless of engine choice."

I for one think E60s, particularly those with ARS, are not up to BMW sport package standards. My old non-sport 3.0 X5 offered a tighter ride with more precise handling.

What do you say?

I think the 535 needs a couple more hundred pounds to be really stable........................ :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:

at high speed in a straight line, it'd be nice if the E60 were as stable as the old E39.

It's the runflat tires which are to blame, not ARS. Stick a set of decent tires on a sport equipped E60 and it's transformed. The 535 gets the pre LCI 545/550 sport pack and those 18" OEM RFT's (I had Bridgestones) are definitely prone to tramlining and fidgeting. A decent set of non RFT's fixes pretty much everything that Car and Driver complained about.

Not sure what to blame but my 5er, which came with non Run flat tires from the factory, was stable at 250 km/h on the Autobahn (as stable if not more so than my E39) and does better than the E39 in corners. I took a 5er around Poconos last year and it did very well on corners.

I second that.

Actually the car is very stable but the road is more directly transmitted to the driver due to better steering. This combined with wide tyres may give unexperienced drivers some degree of uncertainty which many will confuse it as poor stability. Just my two cents.

Not really the best comparison as any tire is going to work just fine on a decent pavement... Unfortunately none of the freeways out here fall into that category.

C&D's professional auto testers aren't inexperienced drivers. The issue is tires, it's really nothing to do with the car, its steering or its stablity. On California freeways, a 550 Sport with RFT's tramlines significantly which is quite probably one of the symptoms that the Car & Driver quote was describing.

Double post...

I felt the 650i with RFT had a "jiggle" to it at certain speeds on most road surfaces. It didn't feel like the refined ride/handling that the E39 had. The LCI 550i with the M sport suspension and non RFT tires is a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT experience. Its as if the roads became soo much better over night. I still notice the tires having to work going over every bump and I notice some tramlining but its certainly stable at speed.