Choosing a favorite among BMW UK’s latest M5 press cars is less a matter of performance than of pigment. Six brand-new M5s—two G90 sedans and four G99 Tourings—have landed in the fleet, and they look like they were picked by someone who actually cares about BMW’s back catalog instead of just ticking whatever shades sell best in leasing brochures. The brief was simple: mix retro soul with modern flash. The execution, thankfully, wasn’t.

Start with Le Mans Blue on one of the sedans, a hue that immediately calls back to the E39 M5, the high-water mark of BMW’s super-sedan era. BMW UK even keeps one of those old-school V8 icons in its historic fleet, alongside a V10-powered E60 and the F10-based M5 30 Jahre Edition. It’s not just nostalgia for nostalgia’s sake either—these cars are kept in near-perfect condition, reminding everyone what “M5” used to mean before hybridization became part of the job description.

The second G90 sedan goes in the opposite direction, finished in Chalk Grey, a color that feels more Silicon Valley than Nürburgring. That modern vibe continues into the Touring lineup, where a Fashion Grey wagon shares space with three far bolder choices: Malachite Green, Wildberry, and Anglesey Green. It’s a lineup that looks more like a curated art show than a corporate press fleet, which is exactly what BMW M should be doing with a car that costs this much and weighs this much.

And yes, weighs this much. The elephant in the cargo area is the absence of a carbon-fiber roof on the M5 Touring. Unlike the sedans, which do get the carbon panel, the wagons are stuck with steel up top. It’s not a philosophical decision—it’s a logistical one. Retooling the Dingolfing plant to assemble carbon roofs on Tourings would be expensive, and the weight savings would barely register on a car tipping the scales well north of two tons. In M3 Touring terms, it made sense to skip it, and it makes even more sense here.

All six cars roll on the same hardware spec, which means the good stuff. The two-tone 951 M wheels—20 inches up front, 21 at the rear—fill the arches with proper menace, while the carbon-ceramic brakes peek through like a subtle flex. BMW UK clearly didn’t cheap out, at least not on the things that matter when you’re hustling a 700-plus-horsepower hybrid missile down a wet B-road.

And while spy photographers are already snapping facelifted M5 prototypes wearing hints of BMW’s Neue Klasse design language, don’t expect these cars to look dated anytime soon. The current styling is locked in for roughly another year and a half, with the Life Cycle Impulse models rumored to start production in July 2027. The refresh will bring tweaks, not a revolution.

For now, these six M5s are a rolling reminder that even in the age of electrification and software-defined everything, details still matter. Paint matters. Wheels matter. And when you’re driving something as absurdly capable as the new M5—sedan or wagon—you might as well make sure it looks just as special as it feels.

Source: BMW