But without the usual ballyhoo or much of a discernible marketing campaign, the M5 went largely unnoticed by the masses. They clocked the special lattice-pattern alloy wheels, the front splitter and the discreet ‘M’ badges. The eagle-eyed cognoscenti knew what the M5 was. That the most potent car on BMW’s ’84 Amsterdam show stand was also the stealthiest may have seemed odd at the time. ‘M’ in this case stood for ‘M-Technik’ – engine and power were unaltered – but it did create a hunger for a 5-series that could do real damage… Meanwhile, the E28 5-series had a brush with the ‘M’ badge as the M535i, basically a 535i with fancy wheels and modest spoilers. And with a further developed version of the M1 engine delivering 286bhp, the 1983 M635 CSi did just that, easily eclipsing the 231bhp 911’s straight-line pace. BMW Motorsport’s CEO Jochen Neerspasch reckoned the combination would give Porsche’s 911 Carrera a hard time. The most obvious recipient was the 6-series coupe. When the Motorsport division’s first road car – the brilliant, Giugiaro-styled, mid-engined M1 – ended production in 1980, there was never much doubt its extraordinary 277bhp straight-six would live on. True, BMW had dropped enough hints that something special was coalescing in the wings. The first European production saloon with supercar-rivalling performance dressed down for the job. Visitors to the 1984 Amsterdam motor show who failed to notice its debut were only experiencing what scores of drivers would subsequently find out on the road. Excludes: Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Philippines, Bhutan, Maldives, Mongolia, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Cape Verde Islands, Central African Republic, Chad, Comoros, Congo, Democratic Republic of the, Congo, Republic of the, Côte d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast), Djibouti, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon Republic, Guinea-Bissau, Kenya, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Mozambique, Namibia, Niger, Nigeria, Reunion, Rwanda, Saint Helena, Senegal, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Africa, Tanzania, Togo, Tunisia, Uganda, Western Sahara, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Aruba, Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Costa Rica, Dominica, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Grenada, Guadeloupe, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Martinique, Montserrat, Panama, Puerto Rico, Saint Kitts-Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Trinidad and Tobago, Turks and Caicos Islands, Virgin Islands (U.S.Maybe it’s apt that the BMW M5 slipped into the world through a side door.

E39 bmw m5