In Germany, the 5 Series was recently awarded the prestigious 2003 German business innovation award in the category ‘major enterprises’ for the development and introduction of the Active Steering System. The active steering system won the much-vaunted innovation prize for enhancing motoring comfort, agility and safety while providing driving pleasure at its best.
The revolutionary active steering system offers a perfect combination of a sports-oriented steering system and a more comfortable design, thus fulfilling an old dream of all suspension engineers: the achievement of the ideal steering ratio at all speeds.
At low speeds, the driver needs to turn the steering wheel much less and with greater ease. Getting into a parking space, for example, requires no more than two steering-wheel revolutions instead of the conventional three to turn the wheels from right to left and vice versa.
At high speeds, on the other hand, small unintentional movements of the steering wheel (when driving on a bumpy surface, for example) have a reduced influence on directional stability due to the reduced steering angle. Thanks to the somewhat more indirect steering, the car stays on track as if it were running on rails.
Furthermore, by communicating with the DSC Dynamic Stability Control, the system identifies oversteering tendencies at an early stage, correcting this behaviour and stabilizing the car through automatic countersteering — all of which are hardly noticeable to the driver.
For these reasons, the BMW active steering system were also given the Technology Award of the Year 2004 by the American "Automobile Magazine" and the Trophée d’Innovation 2003 by the French car magazine "L’Automobile Magazine". In addition to this, over 81,000 voted in Italy during the traditional referendum conducted by the specialized magazine Quattroruote, naming the new BMW 5 Series as the winner among the "upper-medium sedans". The "My favourite cars" referendum is conducted in 15 European countries by the most important national motorist periodicals.
As the new BMW 5 Series continues to gather international awards, it’s clear that the admiration of critics, experts and aficionados worldwide can only be exceeded by the sheer driving pleasure experienced by those who own it.