BMW 5 Series 520d M Sport

have a 2012 520D M-SPORT and the petrol consumption around town is 27 MPG, this is not a figure you will see on any bmw reviews

Probably the best put together car I have owned. Good value to contract hire, very economical and tax efficient. Despite my fears the 2.0 diesel has plenty of power (for me anyway) and is smooth and quiet. Some complain that the interior is sparse but I think it looks very classy. Don't de-bage it - wear your environmentaly friendly credentials with pride!

The new 177bhp 2.0D M Sport is great. The update engine produces more power, is more economical and has lower emissions. The new electronic (fly by wire) automatic shifter certainly seems to improve shift times as kick downs happen almost immediately you push a bit harder making the car feel very responsive and quicker than it actually is. The acceleration is very progressive and lesh harsh than the 530D or 535D and doesn't so much throw you into the back of your seat as push you firmly. It certainly accelerates well and as is typical of this type of car you need to watch the speedo to make sure you don't go sailing past your target speed.The 2 programmable steering wheel buttons and 8 programmable shortcut buttons on the dash are great and a useful way of by passing some of the idrive's intricies. I especially like the fact you can put a sat nav destination as a shortcut - we have home set in there so whereever you are you can just press one button and it automatically starts guiding you home.We specified business sat nav which I'm pleased to say now has a map view again (there was a time recently where there was no map view on business sat nav). You get a smaller screen than the professional sat nav and you only get a 2D map rather than a perspective view but it does the job well.With the idrive you can take control of settings that were in past iterations only available to be set by your dealer. For example central locking functions have various settings that you can set up for each key you use yourself making things much simpler.The ride quality on the M Sport is superb - we tried an SE which was definitely a softer ride but it lost something in that softness. The BMW 5 Series M Sport feels much more direct, more surefooted round the corners and inspires much more confidence, you get a better feel of the road where the SE felt a little disconnected - albeit extremely easy to drive. The offset of course is the ride is firmer and you do feel the bumps etc although I don't think they are transmitted to harshly - the suspension soaks them up but lets you know they are there. If you are used to sport models it will be familiar territory - I guess it's a matter of preference.The standard seats in the M Sport are part electric sports seats - they are very comfortable although I would have prefered full electric with memory (obviously) as there are two of us using the car regularly that would have been useful.The boot is huge but coming from an X5 with it's split folding rear seats as standard I miss those (they can be specified on the 5 series but our model doesn't have them). For luggage holding etc there is plenty of room (520 litres v's X5 460 litres) but with no folding seats you wont fit any long items in. We have the run flat tyres also so there is actually some additional storage where the spare wheel would normally go although it's not immediately accessible as you have to lift the boot floor - good for emergency items though.Another new feature in the revised models is the cruise control with brake function - not to be confused with Active cruise control. The latter is an option while the former is standard. The brake function that it is referring to is simply that once you set your cruise control you have historically had the capability of + or - ing the speed to adjust for traffic etc. However when trying to reduce it you had to wait while the car slowed down - something it sometimes wouldn't do on a hill so you would end up having to brake which cancelled the cruise control and you would then need to resume it after. Now when you reduce the speed the car brakes to acheive the new speed if necessary which is surprisingly useful.

The driving experience, fuel efficiency, great looks and excellent driving position.

The iDrive system is not as good as the Ford Convers system in the Mondeo Titanium X model and it only has one electric point inside the car. Not ideal for the kids DVD players in the back.

Love the car but wish it was easy and reasonably priced to upgrade the operating system (iDrive) for bluetooth for my phone and SatNav.

I have just ordered my next one after having this one for the last 2 1/2 years and doing 80,000 miles. Excellent Handling, good MPG, great Mid range power, look really beautiful and well it was executive car of the year 2003 through to 2007. Much better build quality them a Mercedes benz which is what I had always driven prior to this had 7 through the years Non of which come close to the 5 series.You cant beat it at this level of executive car only thing I have done is gone for the Msport this time instead of the SE with the options I had last time.

I opted for the BMW 520d M sport as it hit the money from a company car tax point of view. I added some options to the standard M spec. Leather/Media package/USB interface (put mp3's on a memory stick and use the iDrive to play them... brill) speaker upgrade and lumbar supports. Its makes the car £34.1k for P11d purposes but does not cost me a great deal more per month than the £25k Volvo S60 D5 SE it replaced (another good car).

Didnt feel that I had purchased a vehicle that was executive car of the year 2003 -2007 when I bought my BMW 520d M Sport. I was disappointed overall with the experience with my first BMW and it will be my last. Dealer I purchased my vehicle from I certainly would not recommend. Its the biggest purchase of a vehicle I have made.