Flying Business Class on the Ground

A couple of years ago, I drove up to 240kph at the STAR Expressway in Batangas behind the wheel of a Porsche 911 (993). The German sports car was pushing the wind at that speed and you could hear the engine screaming that familiar Porsche high-rev wail while the chassis reacted to my every input with impudence. It felt as if I was wired to car, feeling every road undulation, as the tires devoured the highway with alarming ferocity. For me, it was the highest peak of performance driving I ever did in my life.

At least it was until last Thursday, December 11.

On that day, the car I was driving was approaching the same speed at the same stretch of highway but with a remarkable difference. Whereas the Porsche was all wired up approaching that speed, two-forty in this new German four-door sedan was serene and unperturbed that it was almost surreal. Two hundred felt like 100kph except the scenery was moving twice as fast. Changing lanes at 180kph solicited neither a squeal from the tires nor a sigh of protest from my lady passenger. While the wind howled as the car sliced through it, the interior remained a model of peaceful and quiet civility.

Oh, by the way, did I mention the car I was driving was propelled by ahem, a diesel engine? Well, it really was. And before you think I’m trying to stretch the truth, please allow me to mention that I was driving the new BMW 530d.

BMW Group Philippines invited about a dozen journalists, including yours truly, to sample the Business Class Lifestyle that was being flaunted by the new BMW 5 Series (E60 in BMW-speak). Gathering half a dozen spanking new BMW 530d sedans and assigning a pre-designated route, the company took us from our meeting place at UCC Coffee in Fort Bonifacio to our relaxing destination at The Farm in San Benito, Batangas.

Lito German, the dashing corporate communications director of BMW, assigned me to the only black car among the silver fleet of six 530d dealer demos with Joanna Francisco, a former PR practitioner who’s now the managing editor of T3, an upcoming gadgets magazine. Since Lito knows that besides writing for The STAR, I’m also the contributing editor of SPEED Magazine (a high performance technology magazine, thank you very much), I guess he placed me and Joanna in the same car so we could get acquainted despite the looming rivalry between our publications. After all, a little civility in our highly competitive business could do no harm.

Al Camba, the company’s proficient market and product planning manager gave us a tour of the new car’s controls. At the center of the dashboard is an LCD screen that displays the myriad functions of the updated and improved i-drive system mounted on the center console of the new 5. The system is more user friendly than the i-drive of the 7 Series and with the addition of a "Menu" button beneath the joystick, users can navigate back to the main menu once they found themselves lost in the program’s contents. However, despite my (and Joanna’s) tech background, Al may have noticed that we were more interested in loading the glove-box-mounted 6-discs CD changer and adjusting the climate controls than we were in the other tech-y stuffs. And as expected in any BMW, interior finish is first class, with the leather interior of our 5 Series coddling the occupants in a tad more luxury.

Joanna allowed me to take the first dib at driving and I drove the black Bimmer out of the Fort. The new six cylinder diesel engine hardly made its presence felt. It was so quiet and rattle-free that you’d think the car was powered by a gasoline engine. It was also very civilized, working flawlessly with the six-speed automatic transmission and moving sedately along with the traffic at EDSA. At the Skyway, the engine’s 500Nm of torque catapulted the car to 100kph at about half the time it takes you to read this sentence. Outside noise hardly intrudes to the passenger cabin making wind noise virtually nil.

However, the car comes into its element at the STAR highway. Built for the high-speed German Autobahn, the 530d accelerates effortlessly towards the 200kph mark and thrusts the occupants into their seatbacks when the intercooled-turbocharged engine unleashes its 160KW (281PS) potential. The factory pegged its top speed at 243kph but the car reaches 240 without breaking a sweat and feels as if you could rein in about 20kph more. It was so composed and relaxed at these terrific speeds that one can be lured to think it was merely pacing itself.

With Dynamic Drive and Active Steering, the Bimmer makes short work of surface imperfections and lane changes. Even at high speeds, changing lanes can be taken with almost negligible body roll while the occupants are virtually isolated from the road imperfections. Fortunately, BMW engineered an excellent feedback into its steering system that drivers are still connected to the road and vital information is relayed by the car to the driver. After all, BMWs have a reputation for being the "Ultimate Driving Machines".

Brakes are akin to those found on the company’s motorrads. With technical support such as ABS and EBD, the large four-wheel ventilated disc brakes haul the 530d down from extra-legal speeds to crawling speeds with the urgency of motorcycle brakes. No drama, no tire squeals, just a safe and controllable braking force that enables even novice drivers to stop and maneuver away from danger. Provoking the brakes to lock is an exercise in futility: after all, the 5 Series was made for executive motoring, and that includes smooth electronically-controlled stops.

We reached Mount Malarayat Hotel in record time in spite of the traffic in Lipa. After lunch, it was a quick drive to The Farm in San Benito, where we joined by the president of the BMW Group Philippines, Mark Gilbert. We were pampered with massages, cleansed with vegetarian dishes and compared notes as we relaxed with nature.

It was truly a trip reminiscent of an airline’s business class, with every luxury afforded to the passengers. Except the BMW 5 Series had one more luxury afforded to its occupants: the luxury of arriving at your destination in style.