2008 BMW 5-Series

I was looking for a car that would allow me to travel around the country from worksite to worksite, while being contactable via the hands-free and in air-conditioned comfort. The car had to be able to cut through the traffic quickly/safely and it also needed to be a family car at the weekends - so what to choose?

Well, I tried the Mercedes E-Class - the foot release handbrake put me right off straightaway and I've had issues with Mercedes dealership servicing in the past. As for Lexus - yes, great customer care and fantastic reliability but the G and L ranges just left me cold in terms of driving appeal. So, what could BMW offer me instead?

Well, the 5 series certainly has character externally. I'd say it's probably Chris Bangle's best design and I would also say that the look of the car has been reflected in other car makes since (new Mercs perhaps?). So, Mr Bangle must have been doing something right with the design of this car and it certainly brought BMW into the 21st century.

Interior-wise, the cars come with Dakota leather as standard at this point in the range. I'd always recommend the BMW Sports seats over the standard chairs for long distance driving as they offer better support. A friend of mine had the full-on Comfort seats in his 5 and these are fantastic - just like the chairs in the M5.

The fascia is nothing startling looks-wise but all the controls are easy to find with the exception of the fog lights. Why are these hidden away behind the steering wheel?

As for the iDrive - I liked it and found it pretty intuitive and didn't feel that it impacted on my ability to drive the car but I do wonder how manual drivers get on with this set-up compared with the driver of an automatic. The menus for service detail on the car were particularly useful but why does the car have an electronic oil level check that doesn't actually do anything - weird.

One beef that I do have with systems like iDrive is the in-built Sat Nav. The disks for these are not cheap to replace when the maps start to go out of date. I cannot see that the update price is justified - there are millions of BMW owners out there so you would have though that the software costs would have been recouped quickly.

Another beef is the issue of phone compatibility for Symbian phones with bluetooth. The car can pair with a Nokia Symbian phone quite easily via Bluetooth but getting your contacts list transferred is not an easy task and requires perseverance. This is not specifically a BMW issue but I think that it is ridiculous that the hands-free safety aspects are compromised by blue-chip companies not being able to work together to resove these issues before a product goes to market.

Anyway, on to the driving experience. The V8 in the 550i is stunning - the performance figures are 911 quick, mighty impressive for a heavy executive saloon. The sport suspension is excellent although some may feel that the runflats incur too much unsprung weight. I had a car with the Dynamic Drive option which is the e-differential and I can definitely recommend this option for driving down the twisty stuff. The steering was excellent as you'd expect from a BMW and the auto box can be knocked into Sports mode with the ability to change gear manually.

The downside of all that performance is the fuel economy. The car returned less mpg than Porsche 911s that I've owned regardless of how I drove. If you can't stomach 23mpg then look elsewhere or get the 530i instead.

The car I had was pretty well-optioned up and I'd definitely recommend the Xenon headlights - excellent night-time vision and the ability to see into the bends with the moving headlights that follow the steering at speed - just like the Citroen DS. When moving at parking speed the lights do not match the steering input by the way.

I'd also recommend the service pack option. As the iDrive tells you when individual things need doing to the car, you might find you have to make more frequent visits to the service department than you would normally for a car that was mileage driven on service interval.

Reliability-wise, there were a few issues with the car that were all dealt with by the dealership. Noisy door seals seem to be a common fault with the 5 series and the fuel filler flap spring also went. Would you believe that they stated that this was wear-and-tear and wanted to charge me for a new filler spring?

Space-wise - the car is great for a large family and there is plenty of boot space as you'd imagine. I can't see why town drivers need an X5 when they could have the 5 series instead.

Memorable moments - the ability to safely overtake a line of slow-moving traffic and any drive down a twisty road.

Who should buy this? Any 911 owner who can't squeeze those pesky kids into the rear of the 911 anymore and who would prefer to save a large premium over the M5. The fuel economy of the 550i is not great but it is a whole world away from the profligacy of the M5 as well. The 550i will also attract a lot less unwanted attention than the M5 and you can always get the performance enhanced down at your local Superchips vendor. I'd have to say though that the standard car has more than enough performance for most people.