Top Gear

Tonight, Raikkonen... Oops.

Evans... Can't believe it.

Slash...

and bash, as we do proper motor racing.

Hello and welcome to the playground.

Welcome, everybody. Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Now, we begin with the BMW M5.

For the last 25 years, it has been the best fast saloon.

Erm, which is a bit of a problem for BMW every time they replace it,

as Richard Hammond shall now explain.

This is the outgoing M5 in action and, straightaway,

you can see the problem.

It's brilliant.

Big, 500 horsepower, V10 upfront,

naturally aspirated,

it's just distilled essence of single-malt driving pleasure.

And that gives BMW a problem much like that faced by the makers of Die Hard 4,

or of Cheryl Cole's 2011 calendar.

This is a personal analogy, but it works for me.

The problem is this... where to go next?

Well, this is where they've gone the next. It's the brand-new M5.

It costs £73,000 and, on paper,

it sounds like a much tamer beast.

For starters, the magnificent V10

has been replaced by a more polar bear-friendly V8.

When you're driving along, you can certainly hear it.

But then you would as it's fitted with a system

piping a synthesised version

of the exhaust note through the stereo.

That's kind of cheating, isn't it?

Thanks to additions like the seven-speed double-clutch gearbox,

this new M5 now weighs 90 kilograms more than the old one.

At first glance, then, it seems like the M5's

rock 'n' roll days are over.

Oh, dear.

I seem to have accidentally pulled up alongside the old M5,

for what looks like the makings of a drag race.

Yeah, there's a man in a white coat and everything.

Three, two, one, go!

Oh, ho-ho ho! That's some power!

Getting ahead.

Yeah, this is probably a good time to tell you more about that V8.

It's got two turbos which gives it 552 brake horsepower,

52 more than the V10,

and more torque.

A lot more torque.

And it's quick!

Ya-hah-ha!

Had you worried for a moment, then!

More firepower in the engine bay

is just the first piece of good news.

In the old M5, you got a techno-overload

of 11 gearshift settings.

In the new one, it's a more sensible three.

And, with that new twin-clutch gearbox,

the shifts are so fast, the gap between them

can't even be measured. That's good,

But it's not as good as the way this car simply devours corners.

Unlike Porsche, with their new 911, BMW has not gone for electric

steering, but instead stuck with old-fashioned hydraulics.

And it's so much better for it. There's much more of that feedback.

It actually lets you know which way the front wheels are pointing.

With these settings in full track mode, you can smoke all day long.

And, when you've had enough of that,

at the touch of a button, it becomes a completely different car.

The old one was always a bit, you know, "Grr-argh",

always straining at the leash.

But this one, it can be a proper lunatic M5.

Or a soothing companion when you just want to drive along the M5.

See, the motorway? The M...

It's also more economical.

It has a bigger fuel tank so it can go harder for longer,

and then there's the ride.

It's really, really good, comfortable.

There's no stupid rock-hard run flat tyres.

It feels better than a normal five series.

The new M5, then, is not only better than the old one,

I'd say that, as an all-rounder,

it's actually the best car in the world right now.

And, in some ways, it reminds me of this...

The BMW M1.

In 1984, BMW actually took the engine out of that

and put it in a five series

and the original M5 was born.

The point is the M1 was the first supercar

that could also be civilised in the real world.

And that's what they've done here.

Meet the new boss, same as the old, old boss.

I see what you did there. It's a heck of a thing!

I have to say, that car... I drove it the other day... is epic.

It is amazing. Phenomenal car. You like the M5, as well, don't you? Yep.

The only problem with it is that in the past,

an M5 was worth it because it was

so much better than an ordinary five series but the normal five

series now is so good, it's hard to justify spending the extra.

Well, you're quite right. Have you driven the 530 diesel?

It's stupendously good.

And it's £30,000 less than an M5 and it's an almost completely perfect car.

Did you know that in the diesel, if you're careful,

you can go almost 1,000 miles on one tank full of fuel.

That's all you want. 1,000 miles. God! How old are you two?

Well, I haven't spent the last 10 years being 38, unlike some people I know.

I like 38. It's a nice age. I'm going to do it again this year.

Hammond, we don't have time to cut you in half

to see how old you are cos we've got a very busy show.

We also don't have time, I'm afraid, to show you The Stig going

round in the M5 but we can tell you he did it in a 1.29.2.

Pouring with rain, meaningless time.

So what we'll do is move on, swiftly, and do the news.

Yes. And we begin with this.

If you drive a car without a windscreen at 50 miles an hour,

your face looks like this.

We established this very clearly, last week.

Now, if you take the speed up to 80, your face becomes this.

So can you begin to imagine what your face would look like

if you were to drive one of these?

Inside out, I should imagine.

This is the 217mph concept at the moment... Lamborghini Aventador J.

Has no windscreen, has no roof, and I can only imagine, Hammond,

that if you were to drive that, your face would end up like that.

I don't know why you're laughing, James,

because I've done research. Have you? Your face'd look like this.

Let's move on.

The government is holding a big summit to try

and find out how to prevent sat navs accidentally steering people into fields and canals and railways.

Yeah, always reading about them. Heard this discussed on the news and one bloke had

contacted them to say, "I was using my sat nav, driving along in my car,

"concentrating, when I drove down a ramp, past a lifeboat into the sea."

Well, clearly, you weren't concentrating

because you drove into the sea.

The government summit just needs to say,

"If you allow your sat nav to steer you into a field, or the sea, or a nun,

"it's your fault because you're a blithering idiot."

Yes. You're so right. It cannot be the sat nav's fault. It isn't.

A friend of mine lives in Knightsbridge, in the middle of London,

wanted to go and see Chelsea play at Stamford Bridge,

put Stamford Bridge into the sat nav

and only realised something was wrong while going past Peterborough on the A1,

on the way to the TOWN of Stamford Bridge, rather than the big football ground.

How daft d'you to be to do that? It's only a mile down the road.

How thick do you have to be to believe what the digital

pretend woman on the dashboard says over what you can actually see out of the window?

I mean, the sea, for example, it's big, it's blue, the top of it

wobbles around and isn't suitable for motor vehicles. Don't drive into it.

Now, pay attention, everybody. Are you Mario Balotelli or Wayne Rooney?

Or that ginger one... Paul Scholes.

Does your downstairs lavatory look like this?

Nice.

Anyway, if your downstairs loo looks like this and you're a premiership footballer...

good news, because Bentley has made a new 4x4.

Here it is.

Oww!

It is just a concept at the moment and it is hideous and disgusting! Look at it.

Did he step away from his design and go, "Yes, that's exactly what I wanted"?

He must, at some point, said, "Yeah, that's my days work done. I'm going home."

Does anybody here like that?

What? Yes? Seriously?

That's because you're sitting behind the television and you can't see it.

You see, it's not there. It's here. Look. Seriously?

Yeah, I like that. Do you have, in your house, those pillars either

side of the front door like a clang-clang-clang when you hit it? No, but I'd like them.

Have you got two fake stone lions on either side of the gates? No, I'd like them as well.

This is My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding being played out

right here, right now. What's going on? And there's the car.

The only way is Cheshire. There you go.

Moving it along, a couple of weeks ago, there was a report

that said the flashing blue lights on police cars were too bright

and causing accidents because they disorientated motorists. That's as may be.

I have more of a beef with police car sirens.

Too loud. Eh? Massively too loud.

I think I live in a police siren testing area.

Four o'clock every morning, "Sarge, can I borrow the Astra

"and make sure the siren works?" "Go to Holland Park.

"Bring the Fire Brigade, ambulance."

Are you two seriously suggesting that emergency sirens are too loud?

They are. Yes. Definitely. They have to be loud

because they warn people to get out of the way. They need to hear it.

The people in front, but you don't need to know three miles away.

You don't. For people in front, it would be OK

if they'd just had a little bell that went ding-aling...

What's the point of waking me up in the middle...?

I can't move my house out of the ambulance's way.

They're not using the siren... They don't care about you at that time.

They care about people in the way in a traffic jam. "Get out of the way! Wake up James May, doesn't matter."

I'm becoming increasingly fed up of the way you drive up to London,

from your house in Wales, tell us how to live and then drive back again.

We have to live there. Well, I don't live there, but stay there,

and it's noisy and it's stupid. We don't come down and tell you lot to stop hanging witches.

I've just been passed this. At the back, everybody, can you hear this?

Yes.

Clear as, quite literally, a bell.

That's for starting playtime, not sounding an emergency!

He can hear it! I'm in a burning building...

I bet in Ross on Wye they do use it.

I bet they have a cowbell and go, "Dang-dan, Hammond's barn's on fire.

"Send a child down the well. Dan-dang."

You get on with your thing. Stop complaining others are in the city with you.

Ooh, now, next weekend, Formula 1 returns

and the big news is that one of the old guard is back.