Tested: 2024 BMW 530i xDrive Goes Back to the Basics

From the January 2024 issue of Car and Driver.

The Germans have a word for everything. In Munich, zuzeln means sucking a sausage out of its casing. BMW has employed a bit of automotive zuzeln with the 2024 530i xDrive, removing a familiar filling—a turbocharged 2.0-liter four-cylinder hooked to a ZF eight-speed automatic transmission and all-wheel drive—and stuffing it into a new wrapper. Not to dive too deep into Bavarian etymology, but the reason Germans zuzeln is because the region’s signature weisswurst is wrapped in a particularly unappetizing casing. That is certainly not the situation with the new 5-series, which marks a return to the aesthetic adventurism of the 2004 E60, only this time without the Chris Bangle controversy. Our office is split, but there is a faction that thinks the new 5er looks awesome.

As the entry-level 5-series, the 530i concerns itself with delivering a certain look and a business-sedan experience rather than scalding performance, and that’s been true since the days when a 530i actually had a 3.0-liter inline-six engine. This latest 2.0-liter four offers a modest performance bump, making 255 horsepower and 295 pound-feet of torque (versus last year’s 248 horses and 258 pound-feet). While the engine shares its displacement with its predecessor, BMW made plenty of revisions, most notably adopting the Miller-cycle combustion process, which leaves the intake valves open at the beginning of the compression stroke to increase efficiency. On that front, we saw 35-mpg highway fuel economy at 75 mph, matching the EPA’s number. With the 530i’s 15.9-gallon fuel tank, you’ll probably need to stop for a break before the car does. BMW also added a 48-volt hybrid system to bolster city mileage.

Stronger powertrain options, gas and electric, exist on the 5-series menu, but the 530i xDrive aims to please the Bimmerphile who prioritizes efficiency and lower monthly lease payments over 60-mph and quarter-mile times. Not that the latter two are mediocre—5.5 seconds to 60 mph, quarter-mile in 14.2 seconds at 96 mph—but that kind of performance constitutes the minimum you’d expect from a modern BMW sedan.

On the other hand, a sub-six-second 60-mph run looks more impressive when we consider the size of the new 5, which is longer, wider, and taller than its predecessor. We need only look as far back as 2008 to find a 7-series of comparable dimensions, the E65. This 530i’s 117.9-inch wheelbase and 199.2-inch length are slightly longer than those of the E65, and the two cars’ width and height are nearly identical. So it’s perhaps unsurprising that the 530i xDrive also checked in with an E65-caliber 4090-pound curb weight.

For a two-ton slab of sedan, the 530i xDrive certainly knows how to dance. Its variable-ratio steering feels natural and seamless, and our test car’s optional M Sport suspension and 21-inch Continental EcoContact 6 Q tires helped it cling to the skidpad with 0.92 g of grip. The M Sport brakes, peacocking with their blue calipers, generated an impressive 156-foot stop from 70 mph. That’s only four feet longer than the stop we recorded from a 2019 M5 Competition with carbon-ceramic brakes, so: Wow, nice binders.

When the throttle goes down, the 530 spits out some feisty turbocharger intake noise, though you only really hear it if a window is down. Put the transmission in manual mode, and it will faithfully hold gears. Pulling and holding the left shift paddle activates Sport Boost mode, bringing up a 10-second countdown on the instrument cluster that implies a timed deployment of extra power. However, Sport Boost doesn’t actually do anything besides drop to the lowest possible gear ratio. Any performance gain was undetectable to our test equipment.

As we’d expect of a BMW, the 5-series’ stability control is fully defeatable, and that includes the traction-management technology. The system integrates traction control into the engine-control computer instead of a separate stability-control processor. BMW says this essentially allows it to snuff out wheelspin before it even happens, like the precogs in Minority Report preventing future crimes. Indeed, when we drove a rear-drive 530i at BMW Group Test Fest in South Carolina and deliberately launched it with max aggression, it smoothly pulled away with no wheelspin or apparent intervention. We’ll have to test a 530i to figure out whether that was evidence of supreme traction-control prescience or just the fact that 255 horsepower in a big sedan won’t generate a two-block burnout.

The 5-series’ embrace of tech wizardry continues inside. While our test car didn’t have this particular option, the new Driving Assistance Professional system enables hands-free highway driving up to 85 mph. And they mean hands-free: When the car suggests a lane change, the driver confirms it by merely looking at the corresponding side-view mirror. What if, say, you didn’t want to change lanes but just noticed a brown marmorated stink bug crawling on the lower A-pillar? If there’s not yet a German word meaning “regret for surrendering decisions to the machine,” they’re probably working on one.

The 5 also offers AirConsole in-car gaming. Passengers use their phones as controllers for games displayed on the 14.9-inch infotainment screen. BMW is initially offering about 20 games, but hopefully the options will expand to AirConsole’s full portfolio, which includes games like ClusterPuck 99, Mucho Muscle, and fARTwork, titles that seem calibrated to ensure that AirConsole will soon be available in Teslas.

There are various display themes for that screen and the 12.3-inch digital instrument cluster. While we wish BMW had stolen an idea from the new Ford Mustang and threw in an E39 M5 gauge emulator, at least it’s using all of those pixels creatively. Digital Art mode splashes the screen with “Quantum Garden” by Cao Fei, banishing the speedometer to the lower left corner while trippy swirls of purple and green cover most of the screen. Far out, man.

The interior includes some interesting physical details too, such as hidden HVAC directional vanes controlled by rubber nubs on the dash. It’s not immediately obvious what they do until you swivel one and feel the airflow change direction. There’s an extended Merino leather option that swathes the interior in fine hides and another that banishes leather altogether. The synthetic stand-in is called Veganza, which sounds like an early-2000s Kia hatchback sold only in Singapore.

Besides the $3000 M Sport package and the $2550 Premium package (heated steering wheel, remote start, and head-up display, among other things), our test car had the $600 Sky Lounge roof, which puts an enormous glass panel overhead. Its sunshade deploys from the front rather than the back, which means that, counter to decades of sunroof convention, you push the overhead button back to close the shade and forward to open it. You’ll get used to that around month 35 of your 36-month lease.

It may also take that long to get used to the idea of a four-cylinder 5-series that costs $70,745, as this one does. Though we admittedly haven’t sampled the whole range, including the forthcoming 540i and M5, this might be the best 5-series since they were dropping V-10s into the Banglemobiles. However, we can’t help but point out that a loaded 360-hp Cadillac CT5-V goes for $64,045. And if we were in one of those, lined up against a 530i at an intersection, we’d wait for the light to turn green and savor the schadenfreude.

Counterpoints

The 530i seems confused. Its son-of-iX creased and folded styling makes it look smaller than it is; I almost mistook it for a 3-series. Its velvety turbo four is quiet, as a luxury car’s engine should be, but its optional M Sport suspension is tuned firmly. But if it’s supposed to be a sports sedan, where did its steering feel go? Then again, if BMW’s goal here is luxurious driving, why does the infotainment system add to your workload rather than ease it? The 530i has me asking too many questions it can’t answer. —Rich Ceppos

I can still clearly envision the experience of driving an E39 540i back to back to back with its peers on twisty roads in upstate New York in 2001, because it completely recalibrated my car sense as a fresh-faced road warrior. This new series? The engine’s limiter steps in 500 rpm before the redline, the M Sport package gets standard all-season tires, and even if you pony up for the 21-inch summers, the tire is co-branded with a Mercedes marking. Today’s road warriors have already forgotten it. —Dave VanderWerp

Source: Reviews - aranddriver.com