M5 Shakedown

2012 BMW M5 F10 Rendering (Courtesy of BMWBlog and Gerald Alvarez)

Nope, sorry this isn't the M5 Concept due this Friday. This is just another rendering by Gerald Alvarez, which is actually somewhat spot on. Friday's coming any faster than this, but BMW will continue to wet our appetite of their new sports saloon by showing us what it's been doing. They've recently released a video where the M5 Prototype was busy doing a snow workout in the Alps. The car seems to handle snow just fine. If you listen carefully to the engine sound, you may notice that it doesn't "V8-ty". This is BMW's new 4.4-liter Twin-Turbo V8 engine which revs to 7000 RPMs.  The X5 M and X6 M use this same engine and if you watch any car videos with these SUVs, you can tell that they sound exactly the same. This is because of the new Turbo system BMW has introduced into its M-Division called Twin-Power Turbo. Now that the Turbos deliver more boost power to the engine, they also change the engine note. So, if you buy the M5 and listen the engine sound thinking it sounds like a Ferrari, that's normal. You may even be grateful. Anyway, back to the M5, 30 minutes of testing was filmed with the M5 Prototype. You can see the snowy action below.