BMW M5: It’s Viagra in a candy wrapper

Imagine Bruce Lee dressed in a ladies' gown with a diamond necklace and two mother of pearl earrings. That’s what this car is. Just don’t mess for your own good; looks can be deceptive. It’s an innocent looking, cute, little chubby kid who’ll abuse you with the world’s dirtiest adjectives the moment you extend your hand to say hello.

Five hundred horses propel this savage puppy-faced beast from 0 to 100 km/h in 4.7 seconds. In real world, this data effectively means that you are entitled to give the finger to anyone on the road. And you’ll get away with it 90 per cent of the time. Nothing will match up – till the time you mess around with some genuine thoroughbreds like a Ferrari or a Lamborghini. You could give even these exotics a run for their money if you have the required set of skills. The mighty M5 will definitely give you a chance to fight.

It looks like such an unassuming, simple, friendly car when you have the first look at it. You feel like taking your mom, dad, wife and kids out for an evening drive. You want to hum soft songs of joy; you want to cruise at 100km/h and thank god for such a happy and content family. Don’t ever actually do that though. The moment you slot in the key and press that M button, the world around you transforms. The soft songs of joy are now head banging hardcore rock tracks of Metallica. You’re travelling at 250km/h and cursing BMW for electronically limiting the speed. You begin hating your mom, dad and wife for decreasing the power to weight ratio and killing the fun. Of course after this drive, expect your dad to kick you out of his home (if you’re living with him that is) and write a will that puts all his property in the name of an orphanage. Your wife without doubt will divorce you and just pray to god that your kids don’t know a thing about child abuse.

This then, is the car to have for the people who have money but just enough to buy one exotic. It’s the best of both worlds. It eliminates the need of parking a Lamborghini Gallardo beside a Honda Accord in your garage. This one’s both fused into one.

The downsides? Well there’s a system called iDrive installed in all the Beemers these days. And the problem is that BMW hasn’t yet started any training centres to teach people how to use it. It’s a nightmare to use, and it will tangle you in a web of menus, submenus, options and settings so much that you’ll feel like gettin out of the car even before you turn the engine on. Then there are things like Drivelogic, P500S, Servotronic S, M Dynamic Mode, EDC etc which’ll scare you into running for help – screaming! And if you think you could handle all of that, there are a thousand more things to make you get scared every time you pass by a BMW showroom.

You can actually spend the entire day setting the car up through the iDrive system and go back home and sleep without driving for a single millimetre. There are 11 different settings for the way you want to shift gears - slow, very slow, tortoisy slow, snaily slow, fairly fast, fast fast, very fast fast, bullet train fast, Concorde Fast, umm fast and I donno fast. You have the power to decide at your hand, but you’ll never ever find a setting perfectly right for you. It’s just not possible. Simple is sweet, and the folks at the Bavarian company forgot it.

If you, however, want the most spacious, the most practical and one of the fastest sports cars, all bound in one –look no further. Make sure that you’re in a position to take a three day leave from work –you’ll have to learn the iDrive system you know.

IF YOU BUY IT

You’re cool because

You’ve grown up in life and people who appreciate you genuinely mean what they say.

You could drop your girlfriend and her mom t

o the shopping mall at the same time.

You’re ready to learn the iDrive system –which means you’re very, very intelligent and persistent.

You have the mighty ‘M’ with you.

You’ll not be looked down upon even if you parked your car beside a Ferrari

You’re a fool because

Chicks will think you’ve grown old.

Your kids will complain as they find the neighbours’ Alfa Brera Cooler.

People who don’t know ‘M’ will think of you as a totally mundane, morose person.

You’re one of those who don’t see their car as

a tool to get chicks.