F10 BMW 5 Series 525d Diesel Sedan: Road Test & Review

If you’re in India, are nudging forty and are doing reasonably well for yourself with money flowing in thick and fast, you’d certainly want the world to know that you’ve arrived. A dinky(read Japanese) set of wheels don’t exactly qualify as the perfect statement of your arrival at the country club each Saturday, so what do you do? A new executive express is the answer you’re looking for and to grab your attention, two mighty German car makers, BMW and Mercedes Benz are fighting tooth and nail. BMWs have always been drivers cars, cars that folks who love to drive buy, rather than those who prefer reveling in the comfort of the backseat. While this is something BMW has prided itself upon, the number of 40 somethings who want something to go pedal to metal make up pretty minuscule numbers. BMW knows just this and hence, time to say hello to the latest Beemer in town, the 2010 F10 BMW 5 Series Sedan.

 

 

Options in life are great to have but one too may of them, er, can sometimes cause plenty of confusion. Bemused a little, we certainly were when the good folks at BMW India laid an array of 2010 F10 BMW 5 Series cars for us to sample. We had three cars to choose from: The BMW 525D entry level diesel sedan, The BMW 530d Performance Diesel and of course, the twin turbo rocketship, the BMW 535i. Ah, what a dream banquet. BMW India’s bread winner is essentially the entry level 5 Series Diesel, which often had even outsold the 3 Series Sedans. So, this was the primary factor why we settled for the BMW 525d entry level diesel sedan and this model will make or break for BMW and it’s Indian car business. No two things to that. Kicking things off, the 2010 F10 BMW 525D is the car that BMW has positioned to dethrone the Mercedes Benz E Class and will it succeed, read on to find out.

The styling of the F10 BMW 525d is a radical departure from the previous E60 Chris Bangle designed BMW. Only that the radical bit we’re taking about has been completely done away with. The F10 BMW 5 Series is based on the BMW 7 Series and so is it’s styling, which now is a major departure from the in ‘yer face aggressive, love me or hate me, lines of the Bangle designed BMWs. Instead, in the F10, we embark on a design journey backwards, to the timeless elegance of the E39, with plenty of curves that talk elegant than scream edgy.

All in all the F10 BMW 5 Series car looks like scaled down BMW 7 Series Sedans rather than the big brother of the erstwhile E60 model. Now, if you’re a hardcore Bangle fan, you might find the F10 a little too sober, but most folks who prefer looking suited up with leather shoes rather than in jeans and sneakers will simply love the timeless long, low, pulled back design of the F10 BMW 5 Series sedans. In a sharp turn of the tables, the Mercedes Benz E Class sedans scream look at me with the overuse of chrome in their front grilles while the F10 BMW exudes a bunch of class and style you’d be hard pressed to find in sedans of other marquees. This car won’t be an eyesore after say five or ten years and just for this, we like it.

Slipping into the BMW 525D’s low slung drivers seat, you find the steering to be well out of way and we’ll come to that in just a while. The BMW’s doors open very wide to almost 90 degrees and this is something that folks with ample proportions will particularly appreciate. What they won’t, especially if they’re the older lot, is the fact that the F10 BMW sits pretty low and this might not be the best car for you if you have an issue with bending to get in and out of the car, both at the front as well as the rear. You might like it, your dad, er, well we aren’t too sure. Coming back to the steering, a very thoughtful touch here by BMW is that the steering wheel automatically tilts upwards each time you turn off the engine making it easier for the driver to step in and out. So, no knee banging with the steering then.

Once you settle into the plush driver’s seat which can be adjusted for height, tilt and position you’ll have to remember to strap up, for, the BMW will promptly start beeping once you drive off without the seat belts on. This beeping signal however is only for the driver as the front passenger being unstrapped didn’t seem to produce any beeping. Why, only BMW knows.. One thing we didn’t like about the seat belts were the fact that they weren’t height adjustable. This is obviously a glaring omission as even smaller and cheaper cars have it. While you still can live without these, omissions like these on a 40 Lakh rupee premium sedan simply don’t feel nice.

The rest of the tan interiors were real top notch with the overall feel exuding class. Folks who go gaga over beige won’t miss it as the tan interiors more than make up for the color with their rich feel and quality. The plastics too were very good but coming to think of it, most premium German sedans in the 40 Lakh Rupee bracket come with such luxury in the interiors. In a nutshell, you will feel very much at home in the F10 BMW 525d if your daily hangouts include business class seats of aircrafts and five star lounges.

So the interior quality most often is the least of the factors that really determines the purchase or non purchase of a high end German executive express as there is little to choose from in the interior department between the various competing brands. So what then really matters? Interior space. This is one such a factor that tends to play a very crucial part in the buying process of a high end automobile. The F10 BMW had plenty of space upfront and the driver and co passenger won’t have anything to complain about when it comes to comfort and space. In the rear however, the leg room while being ample isn’t more than the outgoing model. We were a tad surprised as the F10 BMW 5 Series Sedans being based on the 7 Series have a larger wheelbase. So we expected some more legroom in the rear.

All said, the legroom in the rear will be more than enough for most folks under six feet to revel in the comfort of the back seat. The headroom however, is a different story altogether. If you are over six foot tall, your head might be very close to car’s ceiling which might make you feel a little wary especially while going over bumps and rough roads. For the rest of the folks however(read 95 percent of Indians) the head room gave nothing much to complain about. The F10 BMW is best enjoyed with four adults aboard as the transmission tunnel intrudes upon a fair amount of the car’s rear midsection and thus four well built adults will be more comfortable in the BMW rather than say one more trying to squeeze into the back seat. But we’re talking India here and most Indians being of smaller build means that three people will be able to comfortably manage in the rear if
the situation demands.

Coming to the climate control, the BMW had a top notch unit that chilled almost instantaneously. What also helped matters were the individual AC controls for both the driver and co passenger which was very useful as we came across situations when we felt the need of different temperatures at front. The rear occupants also do get a nice little blower unit and they also get some extra cooling from under the front seats. But occupants in the rear don’t get temperature control knobs and thus they might feel a little shortchanged in this regard. We’re a little surprised at this deletion as international versions of the F10 5 Series Beemers seem to have them. All said, the BMW was a supremely comfortable car for all it’s occupants, at least with the car standing still.

You have plenty of storage space in the dashboard and that includes some space in the doors as well for stuff like toll receipts and the likes. The leathered glove box just behind the gear lever is good enough to hold a couple of mobile phones while the cup holders can easily manage one liter bottles and yeah, we tried that one out. The ash tray has a nook for the key fob that is specially designed for it and that is indeed some teutonic attention to detail. All the storage bits feel great to use and the smooth fluidity of their operation is of very high order. You get manual blinds for both the rear windows and the quarter glasses while the rear windscreen gets a nice automatic retracting blind.

Little things like these speak a thousand words about how premium the car is and feels like and in regard, the BMW has everything covered pretty comprehensively. BMW has gone ahead to add a bell and whistle in the form of ambient lighting, which essentially is a red afterglow on the doors. Looks classy in the dark but that apart, we didn’t find it of any significant use. Still, this is something of a novelty factor that will make you feel good about your latest drive and so, will be appreciated by most.

In car entertainment starts and ends with the 7 inch iDrive screen, which once upon a time was a sore pain to use. Now, the iDrive works very seamlessly and even newbies will be able to get the hang of the system pretty quickly. The iDrive does bring in the entire car’s function into it’s ambit and you can virtually access almost every tweakable aspect of the car from here. Another nifty bit of the iDrive is it’s ability to store three custom profiles. This is a very handy feature especially if you’re sharing you car with your wife and kids, you won’t have to reconfigure all the little bits and pieces to your individual taste once again. The iDrive will do it for you. The music system with a radio module was great to use in both the radio and CD mode. The sound was rich for most part except at the extreme reaches of the volume where it tended to sound a little harsh. But, for a manufacturer supplied piece of music it, the system worked very well. Now, let’s get going, shall we?

Getting into the car is keyless like in most premium cars and once you get into the car, the steering automatically lowers to your preset position and as is standard in most cars now, you can adjust the steering for both tilt and height. Shutting door doesn’t produce the reassuring Teutonic thud, which now is a muted one. Aluminum doors, remember? The view from behind the wheel was something I was hoping would be good and it turned out to be just that. The visibility from the driver’s seat is excellent and BMW’s conscious effort to engineer the creases on the hood work very well as making out where the hood ended was nice and easy. Very useful feature this, especially in bumper to bumper traffic where you don’t want nicks and scratches on your expensive baby. Getting a move on and pressing the star stop button, the engine starts very smoothly but the very slight rocking you feel as the engine wakes up into life suggests that it indeed is an oil burner under the long and expansive hood.

With the windows rolled down, you can hear the steady thrum of the inline six single turbo diesel but there is absolutely no sign of the engine intruding into the cabin once the windows are rolled up. The only giveaway that this car is a diesel is when you place your hand onto the gear shifter. A slight thrum can be felt here as well and this is the only real discernable difference between the diesel and the petrol version of the Beemers without of course having a look at the badges or under the hood. So, in essence, the clatter free diesel engine is an extremely refined unit which impressed us all the more once we got going.

Driving the BMW into peak hour Mumbai traffic was as easy as a breeze as all I needed to do was to select drive on the gear shifter and simply release the brakes. On most flat roads, the Beemer simply used it’s prodigious torque output that is available right from the word go to roll ahead fluidly. The electric power steering in rush hour traffic felt nice and light and driving the car in the city was an absolute ease, especially in the auto mode. The horn too was pleasantly loud and nice to hear while not being ear shattering and shrill. As the kilometers piled on in traffic, driving the BMW in auto mode was as easy as driving a hatchback, albeit a bigger, wider one. This came a revelation really, as cars as big as this in manual mode are a real bitch to drive around town.

But slotting into auto mode directly translates into simply press and shoot. That is how simple it to to drive the BMW around town and once you get used to the brilliant convenience of the slush box, you’ll really find the manual tranny cars a royal pain to hustle around town. The automatic hill hold feature was very useful in start stop traffic on uphill stretches and we used quite a bit of this in our photoshoot around a small, grassy hill. However, the turning radius of close to 6 meters means that tight u-turns on crowded roads can turn out to be very cumbersome, especially with plenty of traffic around. And yes, we experienced it first hand.

While low speed driving in the city was a pleasant experience, flooring the throttle taking off from the traffic lights brought out the real grunt of the diesel motor to the fore. The Beemer responds almost instantly by dropping three gears and then launching into a frenzied acceleration with a torque kick that only diesels can give. While there is next to no turbo lag in the motor at any point of the rev range. Yes, there is the rubber band effect wherein the engine does take a second before the gears are dropped even as you floor the gas pedal. This little lag after which the full torque of the motor is unleashed is very similar to how the turbo steps in after the lag in smaller cars. But slot it into the manual mode and the rubber band simply vanishes.

Even in the rubber band mode, the only difference in the BMW 525d however is that you’re still building speed rapidly before the thrilling jumbo jet like torque wave follows for good measure. So flooring it from the traffic signals, you’ll be doing 100 in no time even as folks in the back seat will be impressed with the pushed back into the seat effect. As for he driver, your arms on the steering wheel leaves you devoid of the thrills the backseaters experience. Coming to the manual tranny, you should be using this only perhaps when you’re using only a few gears, like say twisties or so. 8 ratios are a lot of gears and shifting these many in the city simply doesn’t make sense.

The BMW 525D’s ride was supple on most tarred roads with no major jarring even on slightly uneven surfaces. However, we didn’t like the way it rode on cement roads. Once we got onto the cement roads, the ruts and cracks of cement roads gave the backseaters jolts especially if the speeds were a little high and the imperfections were a little large. But the same stuff taken at under 30 kph usually resulted in the suspension absorbing most stuff. So, you have to find a driver who is very unlike me, who actually worries about the comfort of the backseaters than going gung ho over potholes. As for the very guilty me, I was too involved in having a blast behind the wheel to really bother about how the backseaters felt. So, the ride is good on tar roads and moderately good on cement roads at low speeds, but if you’re thinking that the F10 BMW 5 Series rides as well as the Merc, sorry sir, the Merc still leads BMW in the ride department.

Ground clearance is adequate at 141mm but for the biggest of the gradient changes and on once such massive gradient change I did manages to scrape the under body when coming onto the road from a particularly no road kind of stretch somewhere around Pune. Thankfully no damage ensued but then again, driving with utmost care on bad roads can help avoid most if not all incidents like these. So, taking it easy on bad roads is the key here. Heading to some good roads, or in other words onto the expressway, where this baby really belongs, leaving little Indian sedans, especially souped up rice boys, was almost a joke and a vicarious pleasure. There are very few cars in India that can hold a candle to this stonking diesel sedan from BMW and if you’re lucky not to encounter the “very few”, you can have most other cars for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

If given the stick, this car can do it’s top speed of 230+ kph without breaking into the slightest of the sweats. all you need is one kilometer of free tarmac and a lead foot on the gas. The handling was very taut at high speeds of 160+ and on very long and very fast sweepers, the car simply held it’s line even when we were doing close to 200 kph. Now, don’t ask us where. Coming to the fun part, the twisties, they were also dispatched with rail like cornering ability but the car did tend to roll around a bit. That was a little disconcerting but when you factor in the suspension tuned for a softer ride than out and out handling like say the E60 BMW 5 Series, that seems like the price a better ride quality demanded. Also, the steering feels a little vague at high speeds and more correction is required than say a more direct hydraulic steering. While it feels very nice in the city as it is very light, at high speeds, you will like some more feel engineered into it.

But all this, when the Beemer is being compared to cars in it’s segment. Talk about any smaller car, and the Beemer is leagues ahead. Giving the steering a light shoves at a speeds of close to 200 kph didn’t result in massive lane changes. So, there seems to be some amount of dead feel engineered in, especially for high speeds when sudden road imperfections might result in slight steering inputs. What’s a fast car if it can’t stop fast enough? The brakes, the brakes were really powerful on the F10 BMW 525D and slamming on them produces another bout of acceleration, this time of the much fiercer retarding kind that we advise you to never try without the seat belts on. For, such antics without being strapped on, could simply result in you flying out of the windscreen. Yes, that’s how powerful the anchors were.

Now, the Beemer comes with ABS, ESP, traction control and the works. So, the car was very sure footed even in the very wet drive back to Bombay where we had a mini flood like situation due to ultra copious rainfall all day long. Dry or wet, cement or road, the BMW was as sure footed as ever and as long as you didn’t do too many silly things, you’d be and feel very safe in the big Beemer. What we noticed just below the electric sun roof amidst torrential rain was the accumulation of water droplets. This definitely surprised us though it didn’t find it’s way into the cabin. So, we did quiz the service advisor while the car was being returned. It turned out that this is normal and BMW has a drainage system which drains the water droplets out into the road. But still, it was quite disconcerting to see it happen for the first time as we had no clue about a drainage system. Teutonic attention to detail, hmmm!

Over the road test, we found a couple of gripes which otherwise would have made this car near perfect. One major gripe is the fact that you get runflats with no spare tyre. While the runflats are the newest thing in tyre technology and offer great tyre performance, what happens when you have a flat. You drive at a very S-L-O-W, for the BMW, 80 and have to reach a BMW service point in under 150 kms, which incidentally is the safe operating mileage for a flat runflat. What happens otherwise? You risk being grounded with the runflat tire giving up the ghost. So, if you’re in say a long trip somewhere far from a BMW service point, a flat would mean calling BMW for help. How does the easy job of just changing a tubeless tire and simply moving on sound?

Terrific isn’t it, but this is simply not possible with the runflats as you don’t have the option of storing another tire in your boot in the first place. Secondly, the run flats aren’t availably commonly, which makes it all the more of a bitch if you aren’t close to a BMW service point. So, owners may strongly consider changing to tube less tires soon after they buy the F10 BMWs. Another gripe was the position of the indicator stalks, which on the BMW, like most European cars was on the right. So, I ended up using the wiper more to indicate turn ins and this can get very annoying.

Why not Indianize this thing instead of asking the driver to Europeanize? Then, there are a few giveaway bits of this car being a right hand drive European version that a truly Indian car by the hand grips even on the driver’s side of the roof. And before forget, the stock alloy rims are lousy looking. The BMW which we drove were very good looking ones, albeit available only as accessories. So, you need to tick this in the options column and expect to pay over a Lakh for this. These issues apart, there was nothing really that gives us a reason to complain as the rest of the car was a delight.

What we liked in the 2010 F10 BMW 525D:

• Terrific 6 cylinder turbo diesel that was a delectable mix of refinement and grunty performance.
• Great 8 speed automatic which simply makes driving the big Beemer in traffic a very easy affair.
• Nice Interiors and the slanting back seat which makes reclining relaxedly a joy.
• Easy to use iDrive and the great bunch of features inside the car.
• Timeless styling which bets on charm and grace rather than edgy lines.
• Terrific handler despite some body roll and the suspension being tuned towards a more pliant ride.
• Mileage of close to 10 Kpl in a very mixed(real time) kind of driving. Most chauffeurs will manage 12.
• Low cost of initial ownership. The F10 BMW 525D is cheaper than even the stripped out cabbie special Mercedes Benz E250CDI. That seals it, doesn’t it?

What we didn’t like in the 2010 F10 BMW 525D:

• Wrong sided indicator stalks.
• Rear legroom which could have been better.
• Rear headroom which people measuring over 6 feet wouldn’t find comfortable.
• Ride quality on cement roads, which despite BMWs best efforts still is not in the Merc class. One plausible cause for this: The very stiff sidewalls of the stock runflats?
• Lack of spare wheel.

So, the F10 BMW 525D was driven for close to 700 kms with a mix of very crowded city traffic, fast stretches of expressway, the twisties and some very bad roads. All this with the sun shining bright as well as the rain gods at full chat and most kinds of weather in between. We came back very impressed with the 2010 F10 BMW 525d. Would we recommend this car to you, the German executive express buyer? Before that, we have a couple of questions. Do you love driving? Do you prefer basking in the rear seat on most if not all times?

If your answer to the first question is a no and an emphatic yes to the second question : Mercedes Benz E250CDI for you. No question.

On the other hand, if your answer to both the questions are a yes, simply go ahead and indulge yourself in the timeless lines of the 2010 BMW 525d. You won’t regret it.

So, there, that was Team IndianCarsBikes’ Teutonically detailed review of a very Teutonic car.

Team ICB for the BMW 525d Road Test: Sudhir Bhatti, Akhil Mahendru, Tushar Kelshikar and Jay Prashanth M.

Photo Credit: Akhil Mahendru. Equipment: Nikon D5000 with 18-55mm VR Nikkor Lenses

 

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  IndianCarsBikes is an automobile blog for all the Auto enthusiasts. Get all the latest news, reviews, launches, first drive reports of all the Indian Motorcycles & Cars including an overview of the World Auto Industry.

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