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This car will give you driving ambitions

A small confession: I think BMWs are overrated. Actually, that's overstating the overrating. What I think is that the 3 Series is not the car that many seem to think it is, and sometimes I'm inclined to extrapolate from that about other BMWs, which is unfair.

It's particularly unfair in the case of the 5 Series. Whereas the 3 Series is just an executive saloon, the 5 Series is the executive executive saloon. The latest update, although not radically different, is such a consummate piece of managerial machinery that as soon as you clap eyes on it, you want to go out and get a senior-ranked job with ICI or Unilever. Or at least get a job as a driver, delivering senior executives from ICI and Unilever to vital business meetings and golf matches.

The interior – all cream leather and comfort room (it's slightly longer than its predecessor) – is perhaps the most attractive aspect of the car. From the outside, it's not stunning or sumptuous, nor will it trigger an instant craving in watching pedestrians. But it is handsome – blandly handsome, perhaps, like some well-turned-out faceless European bureaucrat, yet substantial and sleek with it. Although there may well be no solution to the economic crisis in the eurozone, this is nonetheless the car in which you'd want to set out to find one.

Lacking a critical meeting, or indeed a noncritical one, I instead drove around aimlessly. Except you can't really drive around aimlessly in a BMW 5 Series, any more than you'd chill out in a suit on your day off. It simply packs too much punch and embodies too much sense of purpose to allow faffing around.

The acceleration, for a start, has a way of focusing the attention. Who'd have thought, even just a few years ago, that a diesel automatic could ever leave your stomach in the boot? Fortunately there's plenty of room there for your stomach and many other stomachs besides. It's the kind of car in which you want to receive an urgent phone call just so you can tell the driver, or indeed yourself, to step on it.

I found I got a lot more done in the day, driving around in the 530d SE, than I would otherwise. I'm talking about picking up the dry-cleaning, buying postage stamps and collecting a parcel from the sorting office.

In other words, it revolutionised my productivity, taking it to the kind of executive levels of activity that previously seemed unimaginable. A few more weeks and I would have mastered French, become a parent governor, moved into property speculation and perhaps even started opening my bank statements. I felt almost relieved when it was taken away.BMW 530d SE


Price £37,100
Top speed 155mph
Acceleration 0-62mph 6.3 seconds
Average consumption 44.8mpg
CO2 emissions 166g/km
Eco rating 5.5/10
Bound for Canary Wharf
In a word PurposefulMotoringAndrew Anthony
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