The E39 M5 Video Guide Blog

Well… first of all this is going to be a longer post. So if you are not an automobile or M5 enthusiast you may wish to just scroll down to the pictures and leave it at that.

However if you are an owner of an M5 or thinking about buying one, I’m sure that you will find some enjoyment in reading about my most recent road trip in the beast.

This post is about a recent trip I took down to Spokane … I’m talking about a 6 hour trip here through what I think has to be some of the most beautiful scenery in the world… and some of the damn finest roads the beast could ever hope to devour.

On this trip I also had the chance to meet with one of the M5 Board’s most active members: Churious, who runs Brecus Motorsport. It was great to meet him, learn about his amazing Imola E39 M5, talk about these cars and listen in awe to the sound of his beast as he tore up the Spokane Raceway.

…every time I do one these long distance trips, I fall in love with the M5 all over again. It is just such a capable car in so many ways. And I’m once again humbled by how an average guy like me can own a car like this – EVERYONE SHOULD HAVE AN M5! Even though I’ve owned and driven some rock star cars… there’s just something so special about the E39 M5… and when I got back, I promised myself that I’d sit down and write a full, featured post about the experience.

Driving long distances on open roads in the M5 is such an departure from the usual stop and go traffic that I spend most of the time in. It doesn’t take long to realize and be reminded again how insanely powerful and agile this car is… at all speeds.

If you’ve never experienced what I’m talking about… then you just have to do it. Buy one of these cars.  Steal one… Borrow one… Rent one… just get behind the wheel of one and drive it for a weekend. Take the most obscure, twisty, deserted back roads and get intimate with one of the best cars on the planet.

That’s what I did on this trip with my wife.

Sure…there are more direct routes that we could have taken… but since I make my living online…it’s important for my mental health to disconnect… unplug… whatever you wanna call it… and just get out there with mother nature… and my weapon of choice for doing so is the M5. With the moon roof open… and my iPod stuffed with some of my favorite music… there’s very few things that compare to piloting the E39 M5 around picture perfect roads at high velocity…

It doesn’t take me more than about 30 minutes to get in the ‘zone’.  I’m talking about moving past the conscious awareness of “clutch in…shift gear…cut the corner’s apex…accelerate…harder… sport mode on….dsc off….mini drift….downshift…brake….upshift….accelerate”.

Those are all the conscious mechanical elements I’m talking about leaving behind. I’m talking about the M5′s ability to join minds with you, so to speak, with me as its commander in chief ensuring the beast does as it’s told. I’m talking about becoming one with this thing… so that I’m not thinking about what I’m doing from a tactical, mechanical perspective, but rather from a visceral, ‘feeling’ perspective.

It about following a rhythm.

Driving this car hard requires you get in the zone. It’s less about focus and more about being in the moment. I’m fortunate to have some performance driver training in my background, plus a healthy dose of road experience in other ‘better than average’ cars… so I’m probably more aware of my limits (and the M5′s limits) than the 16 year old down the street whose daddy just bought him a E93 M3.

Yeah…good luck with that pal.

Anyway, it’s hard to believe that the E39 M5 is over 10 years old… but even today it just feels SO good. I get it.   I know how to playfully kick the rear out a bit when I want, without scaring my wife half to death…or putting ourselves in harms way. Temperature, angle of the sun, tire tread quality and remaining depth, throttle, lateral g’s….they are all factors I’m considering at once.

If these things are foreign concepts to you – I strongly suggest getting some performance driving experience – like that from the Andretti Racing School next time you’re in Vegas… or Skip Barber’s BMW driver training… I’ve heard the Ferrari Experience here in Canada is great too.

Somehow the E39 M5 doesn’t let me down in any way …. I’m hard pressed to find ANYTHING this car can’t do well… and I’m still shaking my head that it’s nearly five thousand pounds and has four doors. Really? Damn Germans are so good at building cars… its amazing they lost the war!

The beast has pure, brute force right out of the box… and I just can’t get enough of the sounds coming out of the S62 engine at any speed.

I don’t care about my carbon foot print right now. The green mafia probably has me as public enemy number one… but you know what? I LOVE this gas guzzling, mean, fast, high powered V-8. It obeys and is rewarding to drive.

Let’s not forget this engine is married to a past of winning, proven race-bred technology. Most people don’t understand how important the E39 M5 is in performance automotive history….where do I begin? Double VANOS… Alusil coated cylinder walls, 32 independently controlled induction valves… and still one of the BEST naturally aspirated V-8 Engines out there… wondering what the new F-10 will be like with forced induction…cheap way to make horsepower…

…turning the music up a little louder… getting further into the Zone. Athletes call it “flow”. Time stops moving… my watch is just jewelery now. I don’t want this moment to end. The seat needs a little adjusting… filling up the lower lumbar…ahhh, that’s better…damn rugby injuries.

No throttle lag now…seems that an hour of hard driving is waking the engine up…she seems more responsive… oh…the temperature is ten degrees cooler. That makes a difference… I think about my aviation training and the impact “density altitude” makes on performance, take off distances and time to climb… must have mod: Cold Air Intake for even better temperature management and fuel to air ratios!

Damn…there’s a lot of bugs accumulating on the windshield… I like that… a sign of velocity (mass x speed= velocity…which the beast has plenty of on tap). Is this guy in front of me serious? Where did he come from? Ok… down into third…. four grand… stand on it…. bam… how’d that feel pal? Like you just pulled into a parking space? HaHa! Yeah… it’s ok… they’re called M5′s… you should get one… now…back to business and the open road again…

… oh I should check on the wife! I’ve been having a little affair of my own over here with the M5… Seems she’s loving the iPad… thank God for Angry Birds!!! (if you don’t have it, you wouldn’t understand)… I’m thankful that she tolerates my driving and automotive pursuits…and most important doesn’t get sick with this type of driving.

…ok back to the mission at hand… been a few hours now I think… hard to believe… I can spent all day in this car doing this… when I get out… and still feel fresh I’m so happy for those seats. The E39 M5 is great that way – so accommodating.  And so practical.

Really into the mountains now. Scenery is incredible, air is so fresh and this car is so rewarding… who invented the M5 anyway? I better call that guy before I die and just say… “hey dude… thanks… a LOT!”

If you’re read this far… you’ve either experienced what I’m trying to put into words… or you’re entertained by my inability to communicate an experience that is actually very hard to put into words for an amateur automotive writer. I don’t know how else to express it… it’s kinda like one of those things… when you understand; no explanation is necessary – when you don’t; no explanation is possible.

Let’s just leave it at that.

Driving at the level of intensity I’m talking about requires responsibility, awareness and forethought. You’ve got to know the terrain a bit. And if you’re driving with pack of pals doing the same thing, my experience is that it’s easier if you’re NOT the lead car – but car #2. You can watch how the lead car is behaving and use it to help you understand how to navigate the road. Rookie race car drivers are taught to do this all the time early in their careers – and not worry too much about winning, but instead focus on developing WINNING driving habits.

And you can’t be hungover or preoccupied with some emotional baggage when you’re driving like this either. A clear mind is paramount. Too much caffeine isn’t good either… I always worry about the racing teams sponsored by Rockstar energy drinks. LOL!

You also can’t drive flat out like an idiot. I take it in cycles… spurts… it’s a rythym… I like sneaking up on someone… or a group of “someones”… then dropping the hammer. EVERY single time I do that I get chills as I blast past them. You’ve got to have radar… and you’ve got to have a laser jammer. I know from my RCMP friends here in Canada (and having tested laser jammers) that the second you’re tagged… you’re dead… you simply don’t have time to scrub of 50 or 60 and get back to a ‘reasonable’ speed.

…further, the punishment for excessive speeding in BC is getting more severe later this year – higher fines and the officer’s perogative to impound your vehicle on the spot. That would REALLY suck.

Countermeasures (both technical and operational) really are a necessity at this level of driving. Proceed without them and you deserve what you get.

…other times… it’s just nice to cruise and enjoy the amenities in the car. This thing has just the right amount of technology for my liking. And I LOVE technology. Sometimes when I’m in the E60 M5 I’m distracted and impressed at the same time by all its wizardry… makes me wonder how far away we’re going to get from the raw, pure, visceral driving experience with gizmos before we come back to reality and remember that it’s just about three things: you, the car and road.

Everything else is just a distraction in that moment.

Speaking of distractions… I think to myself of the three things that I’m always mildly worried about… and highly alert for: wet pavement, gravel and wildlife… the first two can be managed with experience and vigilance: break that contact patch with enough lateral force and DSC won’t save you… the most dangerous is wet road, but no rainfall – that gets rookie drivers every time.

Wildlife… yeah… Canadian roads have more shoulder and greater foliage distance from the edge of the road that do American secondaries. This means you have less time to stand on the brakes when Bambi pops out without notice. While I’m worried, I’m not paralyzed by fear…. a little fear is actually good - it keeps the mind very alert and the senses, especially the sense of vision in this endeavor highly engaged.

Speaking of vision, I remind myself that as speed increases, peripheral vision narrows, which means the faster I go on a narrow road, the less chance I have of seeing Bambi or anything else that might jump out of the forest onto the road in front… so I have to make the decision as to how to best balance speed, stopping safety and my own selfish desires to enjoy the M5.

Sure enough on the way back to Canada… it happened on a STRAIGHT road… Bambi and two of her gal-pals seemed to out galavanting in search of some studs for a little romp on the forest. Apparently the route to the best place to pick up single guys crossed Highway 21, which my wife and I were traveling on briskly… all three deer hopped out onto the road with no warning… instantly I stood on the brakes as hard as I possibly could.

Thank god for those big, heavy rotors and one of the best (albeit very expensive to maintain) braking systems on the road today. No ABS skipping, no shimmy, no pull to either side… just the sounds of brakes doing their job (can’t quite find the words to describe that sound at this moment) and the sensation of your eye balls being sucked out of your skull… iPad flies of my wifes lap while she lets out a little yelp as we quickly come to a very dramatic stop…

…sadly there’s really nothing you can do at this moment but hope that either A: Bambi and pals keep moving or B: that you had enough distance, no one with lesser stopping ability too close behind you and stopping physics to make the cut. I our case, option “A” didn’t happen, so fortunately, option “B” worked in our favor.

Silence… just the idling engine and a knowing glance into my wife’s eyes… it’s all good… all three deer are looking at us… not sure quite what to do… then… as fast as they appeared, with a few flicks of their fluffy white tails, they were gone into that dense, green Pacific Northwest scrub brush and forest.

That feeling in my veins is an increase in adrenalin. Clearly my adrenals are still working. That thumping? My heart. I’m glad it’s still working too.

… the next hour or so is much more mellow… in fact the rest of the trip home was more about relaxing and taking it easy. I personally can’t spend all day at nine tenths…not only is it too draining at the end of the drive for me, but I’m sure that I lose the “edge” at some point and I’m just not safe any more.

My final thoughts as I pull into the garage are how I can’t wait to do the wash and detail I put together as one of the Bonuses inside the M5 Video Guide… and how I’m looking forward to doing a trip like this all over again in the spring.

In the meantime, I have my memories to relive from yet another incredible E39 M5 experience.

…and by the way…if anyone reading this know the number for the guy who invented the M5, please let me know, I’m gonna call him and say “thanks”.

Here are a few of the pics from various points in the trip there and back

(click any of them for a full screen slide show):

Related posts:

1. Weekend Road Rally With Friends
2. Spare Instrument Cluster For An E39 M5
3. Camshaft Position Sensor for your E39 M5