I know what you’re thinking. It looks like a 'Ring Taxi. Maybe that was the intention, the perfect disguise for a prototype as it pounded around the Nürburgring, although Harry, who runs this facility, reckons the livery was added later. The E60 M5 was the most hardcore regular M5 there has been. I always think M5s go in waves. You get a relatively soft centred one (the E39 V8), then this car went the other way. The one after, the F10, was a bit podgy. The hunt for a sweet spot perhaps.
What matters here is that they were going to take the most uncompromising M5 there had ever been. And intensify it. The standard car, famously, came with the S85 naturally aspirated 507bhp 5.0-litre V10 that developed peak power at 7,750rpm, revved well past eight grand and loved to go there. It was mated to a seven-speed sequential manual gearbox that even back then was considered a bit of a head-banger.
This one never made it that far. For reasons that are lost to time – or BMW doesn’t want to divulge – the E60 M5 CSL was stillborn. There’s a visual clue to what’s been done. See the extra grille where the numberplate should be? It was needed for extra cooling, because the V10 was bored and stroked out to 5.4 litres. Around 550bhp. They’re not exactly sure, because it was never dyno’d.
The bigger news was the gearbox. No, not a manual conversion. That popular aftermarket retro-fit was not what BMW had planned for its forward-looker. This one had a twin-clutch gearbox, the same one fitted to the E92 M3.
Me? I’m imagining M engineers pounding around in their own 'Ring Taxi, grinning wolfishly.
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