Car launches are everyday affairs but some are still exceptional. Any new mainstream model from BMW is decidedly in that category so it won't be a surprise that we are going to give a lot of attention and quite a measure of enthusiasm to the latest Bavarian arrival.
It's the new 5-series, which is now in its fifth generation, and it will have a September launch for the Irish market. The hype was high and the superlatives were flying away back in late 1995 when BMW launched its outgoing or current 5 range. Then the 528i was the model that everyone raved about: a distillation of the best in styling, performance, economy and naturally, driving pleasure.
Autocar, the British car magazine, thought that it was "probably the best car in the world". So is the best in 1995, even better in 2003? That's largely our judgement because of a whole basket of improvements and revisions. It's slightly bigger than before but up to 165 lb or 75 kg lighter, while its engines use less fuel and emits lower levels of harmful emissions. The bigger dimensions do make a difference for rear seat passengers and golfers, getting the all-important golf clubs to slide easily into the trunk.
The BMW engineers seemed to have been adept in this challenging and very contradictory area, putting in an improved crash safety structure and giving more equipment while at the same time offering the better performance, economy and emissions that's de rigueur these days. Weight saving was achieved through the partial rather than wholesale use of aluminium, as in the Jaguar XJ and Audi A8 models. That said, virtually the entire front end, along with the front and rear suspensions, their subframes and much of the brakes is of alumna.
Probably the most radical feature is a world first. It's the active steering and it is only being offered as an option. It not only varies the steering ratio according to speed so it's responsive about town and stable on the motorway. More importantly perhaps, in an emergency situation, it also detects a skid and steers into the slide, regardless of what your hands are doing with the wheel.
The BMW speak is that active steering combines the potential of all-electronic steer-by-wire systems with the authentic steering feedback currently offered only by mechanical steering.
If all that is a trifle complicated, then think of it first in parking and then travelling at high speed, say a wildly illegal 150 mph. In the first manoeuvre, only 1.7 turns will be required lock-to-lock but at the high speed, that becomes 5.0 turns.
As with the controversial 7-series, the 5's main electronic systems, from entertainment to telephony to navigation and climate, are all controlled by the computerised iDrive via a single rotary dial between the front seats. The theory is that it reins in the confusing proliferation of switches on modern high-tech dashboards, a sub-editing job if you like. Most observers think the practical aspects are open to question.
The good news, however, is that iDrive in the 5-series is much simplified over its bigger sibling's labyrinthine system.
From the 7-series, there's also Dynamic Drive, while other goody options are adaptive headlights, run-flat tyres and BMW takes over directly from its innovative head-up display system with all important data like your speed appearing at face level on the windscreen. Like a lot of good ideas in the car business, it's a bit of borrowed aircraft technology: pilots will be very familiar with it. Six-speed gearboxes, automatic or manual, with or without SMG (sequential manual gearbox) are standard.
New BMWs of whatever series, used to be evolutionary rather than revolutionary in looks but that all changed with the new 7-series. If you like the 7-series, you'll like the 5-series just as much.
They are now unmistakeably sisters, the 5 having taken on what BMW calls the "elegant muscularity" of the flagship model. In spite of the outward similarity, the new 5 doesn't quite exude the rule-the-road supremacy of the 7, probably because of the reduced dimensions. This new reworking of BMW design come from BMW's chief stylist, Chris Bangle who is an American and keen to make its mainstream progeny look that bit different from the past, and more emotional.
Three variants will be available when the car goes on Irish sale in September, all powered by straight sixes. They are the 2.2-litre 170 bhp 520i, the 3.0-litre 231 bhp 530i and the 3.0-litre 218 bhp 530d turbodiesel. Not long after we will see the 192 bhp 525i. Down the road, in 2004 and beyond are the Touring or estate versions and a fourth generation M5 with a blistering 500 bhp V10 engine.
There's no talk yet of Irish prices but BMW say that for the German market, the increase has been modest, around 5 per cent more than the old car. We can only look enviously at the German tags for the new 5, €40,600 for the 530 petrol and turbodiesel models and €35,100 for the 520i petrol.
The new 5-series arrives here just as BMW takes direct control of the Irish market, replacing Motor Import Limited which has had the franchise for nearly 40 years and successfully grew it from obscurity. Around 200 new 5s will be going to customers in the last four months of this year so BMW Ireland's first new business has an assured look about it.
Against its main rival?
The arch rival of the 5-series is the Mercedes-Benz E-Class. How does the 21st century fifth-generation Bavarian match its Swabian counterpart? In our judgement, without its optional technologies, it's ahead but only just: it's a photo finish. The old BMW 5 series had been dislodged from its first place by the new E-Class, and the gap is or was a wide one.
But the new version of the 5-series puts it back on top.