Why the E39 M5 is the best BMW ever. Review!

This is a BMW E39 M5 and to many it is the best ever M5 and one of the very best BMW M cars actually. Bizarrely though I've never driven one. I've driven every other M5 just not this but finally today I'm going to do it. You see I'm thinking about buying one of these and if you are too in this video I'm going to explain some of the things you need to look out for if you're looking at getting yourself an E39 M5 and if you are you need to move fast because values they are going up. Now this particular car is rather special and I'll tell you why in this video. Let's start off with a quick history lesson. So the first M5 was the E28 which was launched in 1984 then there was the E34 which was launched in 1988 then along in 1998 10 years later we had this the E39 M5 and it was built from 1998 to 2003. The price new £52,000. Now you can pick these up for around £20,000 for a ratty one. A good one is about £40,000 and this one here is probably worth the same as it was new. Before we go any further I want to say thank you to Carly who have sponsored this video. So I've got their portable OBD reader. I can plug this into the car interrogate its brain and send information from this wirelessly to my mobile phone. Then I can actually look at various fault codes. I can find out what the problems are. I can then actually clear them myself for my phone or fix them myself. It also gives you the option of coding your car so you can unlock some hidden features. So I'm going to actually try it out now on this M5. So I'm going to plug it into the OBD port then all you have to do is connect it to your phone and to do that you download an app either from the Google Play Store or from the Apple Store and then it's just dead simple it will connect. Okay so now I can investigate various things on the car such as the health and things like that and if you want full functionality which I do you need to sign up to a subscription. So I've got all that done and I'm going to run a health check on this BMW see if it's healthy. Let's find out. Oh dear so we've got some health issues. Let's find out what those are. There we go. Now I can actually use a function called smart mechanic which will give me lots of information of what the problem is and what I need to do to fix it. So that's really good if you're a real novice like me and you need things explaining to you and don't have to then go searching through the internet to find out what various fault codes mean. Right let's have a look at this. Okay severe issues. Okay so quite a few codes here though they're not showing up on the dash of this car. Hmm this is a little bit confusing. Definitely fault codes on here and something here with the air intake. So this is obviously a really good feature if you're thinking about buying a used car because you can interrogate it yourself. Now if you want to find out more about the Carly OBD Reader and the app I'll put a link in the pinned comment just click on that and go check it out. Also I'll put a link in the description to this video as well. But let's just go and have a look into the bonnet to see what might be going on because I think there's a reason for these fault codes. Ah that's why this is throwing up an intake fault code. Look that is not original. This car's been tuned. I sort of knew that anyway. Now more on that in a moment. I want to tell you about the engine in this E39 M5 because it's an absolute beast. This was the first time BMW used a V8 in its M5. All the ones before had a straight six engine and this was some unit. So it's a 4.9 litre pumps out 400 horsepower and 500 newton meters of torque. Comparable Mercedes and Audis at the time had about 350 horsepower 0-60 in 5.3 seconds though. Yeah this one's going to be quicker because it's fitted with a Rotrex centrifugal supercharger. Another thing that's interesting on this one is normally you'd have an intercooler there for the supercharger but they didn't want to cut away at these body panels so it was actually fitted down on the side and obviously the air under pressure goes into this intake plenum. Now it's made out of billeted aluminium. It's absolutely gorgeous. The reason it's made out of that stuff is because the normal plenum would actually shatter under all the boost pressure. The result of this upgrade plus a full exhaust system and an ECU remap is 630 horsepower and 700 newton meters of torque. Oh yes this is an absolute beast as we'll find out when I drive it. Here at the front the major changes over the standard e39 5 series is this more aggressive front bumper and for the geeks chrome surround for the kidney grille. Look how small these kidneys are. They're tiny aren't they compared to modern BMWs. There's one other thing I should mention on this car. This one actually has the facelifted model's headlights so the car was actually updated in 2001. That included some special daytime running lights which are known as corona lights though that name is not quite so popular today for some reason. Here's proof that modern cars are a lot larger than they used to be. You see this m5 is actually 18 centimeters shorter than the current m5 and six centimeters lower. It's a lot more discreet as well so it just had the normal 5 series body no flared wheel arches like the current car. There are some additions though such as side skirts you've got the m badging there on the side some m specific door mirrors and m alloy wheels though the wheels on this particular car are very specialist bbs lms and they're 19 inches rather than the standard car's 18 inches. These wheels are very expensive and very hard to get your hands on. Here at the back styling upgrades include a discreet body colour boot lip spoiler m5 badging a sculpture bumper but the standout feature are the quad exhaust pipes though these are upgraded evolve exhaust. Still though this car it's definitely much more of a sleeper than the current m5 though it won't put you to sleep because this thing has some serious performance. The e39 m5 was only available with a six-speed manual gearbox you couldn't get an automatic it's the other way around nowadays isn't it now to cope with the extra power from the engine bmw had to fit it with a beefier clutch than the standard 540i also it had a rear limited slip differential with up to 25 percent locking good for drifts. The m5 had rated brakes over the standard 5 series so i had 345 millimeter discs at front and 328 millimeter discs at the back and the discs were floating discs and they were lighter than the standard cars and that gives you improved ride quality and better traction on bumpy roads that said though the brakes weren't all that good. So these ones have been uprated they are brembo brakes with four piston calipers here on the inside the early noughties was definitely peak bmw in terms of quality so materials are lovely all the controls just beautiful weighty and damped the buttons are solid as well and it's all simple easy to use though there are things of its time like the wood veneer you didn't have to have wood veneer you could have like a metallic looking plastic trim which i would probably prefer and look at this old infotainment screen the graphics are just so old-fashioned but look it's got a television uh it doesn't actually work because it runs on the old rf system and all the television signals now are digital oh well still we do have a cassette player and you can use that so long as you've got some cassettes then there's this listen to this the sound the door makes when you shut it new bmws don't make that sound that heavy reassuring clunk now upgrades for the m5 include this m sports steering wheel with the m badge there you've got your m stitching it's normal girth as well unlike modern bmws which are like holding a bicycle tire they're so fat you've got these electric m sport seats very very nice you have this m gear knob here and when you turn the headlights on it illuminates other features you get include m on the sills and m specific dials with those led lights there which extend your red line for when the engine is cold and then it slowly lets you have more revs as the engine warms up until you're allowed the full 7 000 rpm obviously being a car from the noughties you have an ashtray and i love the way this just like pops up that little rises up and of course not a 12 volt charging port but a cigarette lighter oh yeah not so impressed by this look the cup holder what the what what are these gonna hold look flimsy and very shallow they're not gonna hold anything especially nothing when you start accelerating with the amount of performance this car has got i don't think this is original this bit of trim here around the handbrake at least you have got a manual handbrake which does mean that i could do some handbrake turns though i probably won't because it's not my car the m5 also got rated suspension so m specific springs dampers thicker anti-roll bars different wheel carriers steel ball joints and heavy duty bushings this car has had a full suspension refresh including bill stein suspension here in the back there aren't any real noticeable differences from the m5 to the normal e39 bmw5 series that means that it's comfy headroom's all right knee room's okay though i think there's more knee room in the back of my current m3 you do have features back here though that you don't get in the m3 once again we have ashtrays and some more of those flimsy cup holders this one's so flimsy it seems to like a bit it's a bit broken go in yeah there we go you do have a sort of tri-zone climate control because you can change the temperature here for the vents in the back and really that's all i've got to tell you let's finish off talking about practicality with the boot so the capacity here is 410 liters which is actually 120 liters as you can see this one is packed full of plastic which is used for covering the car i think this is actually owned by imran from evolve automotive he's never going to sell this car apparently he loves it now if you want to say thank you to imran for lending me this car for showing it to you then i'll put a link to his youtube channel in the description so go find that and go subscribe to his channel if you're thinking about buying one of these old m5s as well as his usual vehicle history check and making sure you've got a full service history there are a couple of key things to look out for the first is a suspension overhaul you're going to need it between 60 and 100 000 miles but the main one is the engine you need to listen out for tapping now tapping from the engine can just mean that the cam chain tensioner needs replacing that's fairly cheap what it can also mean though is that there's a problem with the dual vanos unit now that controls the timing on the inlet and exhaust camshafts and if the seals are going inside that unit or there's another problem it can be very very expensive to fix shall we do a cold start let's do a cold start first time driving an e39 m5 even when you're just pottering along it makes a lovely noise obviously this one's been enhanced with that uprated evolve exhaust but there's just a lovely thrummy sound big surprise for me gear shift now i remember bmw's manual gear shifts just been all rubbery and rubbish this one though it's short it's tight it's precise it's nice the clutch is solid enough without being too spongy nor too hard they've got it just right and so too with the pedal position you can heel and toe in this car so i'll just pointlessly break even though i don't need to whoa oh the responsiveness of this engine is so good that's one of the great things about supercharging compared to turbocharging it really doesn't alter the throttle response all that much over the car just being naturally aspirated it's so linear and the pads keep building building building building building all the way to the red okay i found a nice straight bit of road let's do a pull away i'm not gonna do a full-on launch oh my god oh that's awesome the harder you rev it the more it rewards you i love this setup it's so good i tell you what's also good the suspension so this car is pretty much as new in fact it's better than you because not only has it got all new bushings and refreshed suspension this suspension is upgraded and it's so smooth over bumps really is it just deals with them so well yet it feels completely planted it's quite an easy car to drive as well because visibility is so good obviously pillars were a bit thinner back in the day less crash protection another thing the steering so it's a bit odd in this car reason being that because the v8 is so big bmw couldn't fit the normal rack and pinion steering from the standard 5 series so it's got recirculating ball steering and while it's precise it lacks feel other than that though the way this thing goes into corners is really quite impressive so there's a little bit of body lean compared to the very latest m5 but it just hooks up nicely you've got loads of grip and the traction is actually pretty good so coming out of a bend just applying throttle oh the way that power builds i'm impressed with how it's putting the power down on this greasy road what an amazing car i can't believe it's like 20 years old it's so nice i hope you enjoyed the video once again i want to say thanks to carly for sponsoring it and if you want to get yourself one of these little portable obd readers then follow the link in the description and in the ping comment and then you can actually just plug it into various cars and check out any fault codes and do some diagnostics yourself