May 18, 2022 • 36 mins
Malcolm Gladwell joins Eddie to share this ode to sport-sedan purity, before automation and excessive trim ruined everything.
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin. Hey Eddie here, before we get started, I wanted
you to know that you can listen to Car Show
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(00:37):
Pushkin Plus on the Car Show page, in Apple Podcasts,
or at pushkin dot Fm. I'm super nervous driving your car.
Oh no, don't be. It's like, you know, it's funny
in my old golf r I felt it in vulnerable
and the same thing into CALICYTSD. I feel like I
(01:00):
really feel like they're going to cover up any errors
you make. Yeah, this card there is a little hint
of danger. I feel like you're a little bit on
your you know, they're you know, they send you off
and they say, you know, be well, my son. Isn't
(01:21):
that a good thing? Doesn't that keep you? It does keeps. Yeah,
they're no safety nets, and that's I think probably good
for the human species in general. A little automotive Darwinism
always focuses the mind. I'm Eddie Alterman, and this is
(01:41):
Car Show, my podcast about why we drive what we
drive I'm with my friend and fellow car geek, Malcolm Gladwell.
We're on the pockmarked, slushy switchback roads of upstate New York.
I first met Malcolm back in twenty thirteen when he
chided me about something I'd written in Car and Driver.
(02:02):
We've been friends ever since, and today we are on
a vision quest. We are looking for the soul of
the sports sedan. We are also looking for lunch, and
we're doing it at the wheel of Gladwell's zone. Two
thousand and three BMW M five. This is a car
(02:25):
that is holy accepted by me and most other car
geeks as the best sports sedan of all time, not
just of its generation. Not just the best sports sedan
that BMW ever made. No, the best fast forward door
that ever was. And it's no wonder BMW made it.
(02:45):
BMW built its reputation on sports sedans and coops, not
sports cars. Going back to the sixties, BMW made upright
little bricks harboring dark souls, fast terrible goblins from the
Black Forest of Germany with names like two thousand and
two and three twenty five I X. They would sneak
(03:06):
up behind your Mustang on a moonlit two lane row
and terrorize you for however long it took them to pass.
There are many jokes about the people who own them.
What's the difference between a porcupine and a BMW. Porcupines
have their pricks on the outside. BMW sports sedans were
(03:29):
always better than their sports cars. They didn't make flying
pizza slices like Ferrari or Pantera did. They made cars
that flew under the radar, which is why many people,
cops included, might look at this high performance version of
the respectable five series and see just another country club car.
(03:49):
But to those in the know, this stealth factor is
a huge part of the appeal. It's what makes the
M five so exotic, and it is why we are
somewhat comfortable doing extra legal speeds on the back roads
of the cop infested Hudson Valley. This is no flying
pizza slice on its surface, it's just a middle of
(04:10):
the pack BMW. But underneath, that's where the magic happens.
This version of the BMW M five is the most
responsive sports sedan ever built, the most poised, the most sensitive.
We've got to put it in sport. Oh yeah, it's
got the It is a sport. Sport is Yeah, definitely.
(04:33):
The throttle response is dramatically quicker. Yeah with sport. I'm
offended they have a sports setting. It should just be
too to sport, right, Like I don't. I don't person
who would drive this car and not wanted a sport mode.
It's kind of like eleven on Nigel toughnel stamp. Yeah, exactly.
We need that little extra push over the edge, you
(04:56):
push the sport punt. But it's just like alive in
your hands in a way that modern cars aren't, and
yet it still feels totally modern. That's why I think
this is such a high water mark for cars in general.
This version of the M five hit the market twenty
three years ago. A few sports at hands came before it,
and many came after it, but it is widely accepted
(05:18):
in the car community as the goat the peak never bettered.
I know you're thinking, no way this can be true.
Those of us who canonized that must just be nostalgic
for the time. It represented a time of tomagotchis and
beanie babies, spice girls and backstreet boys who wouldn't pine
(05:38):
for those days. But just as backstreet boys become backstreet
middle aged men. No car can remain at the peak
for twenty years. If you look at the numbers, acceleration breaking,
road holding cars don't peak. Really, they keep getting faster, grippier, quieter,
(05:59):
more comfortable, more reliable, better, better, better. They are quite
literally vehicles of progress. Today cars are digitally remastered to perfection,
with all kinds of automated wizardry, all kinds of management software,
and with all the flaws removed, whereas premillennial cars are
(06:20):
mostly just straightforward mechanical parts, straight up analog. By the
sheer empirical evidence like acceleration and fuel economy, the notion
that the newer digital car is better than the old
analog one is manifestly true. And yet here we are
behind the wheel of a two thousand and three BMW
(06:41):
M five, and here I am with the claim that
it's still, almost twenty years later, the best sports nan
of all time. How can this be? How can a
car that came out two decades ago still be the
top of the mountain. On this episode of Car Show,
we're going to try to answer that burning question. We'll
(07:04):
put old versus new. The two thousand and three E
thirty nine M five versus a twenty twenty two M
five competition. We are going to see if my assertion
holds up or if I'm just nostalgic for that time
I tread out to be a backup dancer for the
backstreet boys. Oh it's so good. It's so so good
(07:52):
that engine engine note a load. I could fall asleep
to this engine. Notice I can associate it's so like smooth,
smooth and beautiful. We are attacking the mountain rows of
the Hudson Valley and Malcolm Gladwell's cold silver two thousand
and THREEWM five. The sky is spitting out a faint sleet.
(08:14):
These roads are narrow and frost heat with the added
threat of wandering livestock. This is the perfect crucible for
this car, a test of body composure, engine response, and
ride quality. We'll soon repeat the same exercise on the
West Coast in more perfect road and weather conditions with
(08:37):
an allegedly more perfect twenty twenty two BMWM five competition.
But this won't be a traditional car magazine comparison test
out on the test track in controlled conditions. It can't be.
For one thing, BMW want to give us the new
car in New York to go toe to toe with
Malcolm's something about summer tires and too much snow and
(08:58):
my driving record. But even if we can't drive them
a to beyond the track, or even over the same
roads in the same conditions, I am convinced we'll get
a strong impression of which one is the better sports sedan,
which one fulfills its mission better, which one is more
fun to drive? And most important, why it must be said,
(09:21):
the notion that a big German sedan should be fun
to drive might seem ludicrous. This looks like a banker's car.
The whole point of these things is to create an
air of respectability and gravitas, not tire smoke. A midsize
German sedan like this one would seem to lack a
certain joadaviv. But while it might look like a regular
(09:43):
old BMW five series, look closer at the two thousand
and three M five. It sits lower. The M five's
fenders have a more pronounced flare, the wheels are wider.
It's way more badass than other lesser BMW five series cars.
(10:03):
The M five is the work of BMW's internal Motorsport division.
The Clouses and Helga's who make BMW's racing cars, hence
the M. This generation of BMW five series had the
internal code name E thirty nine. So pretentious BMW geeks
love to call this car the E thirty nine M five. Yo.
(10:23):
Here we're using code nth Anyway, the E thirty nine
five came out in the late nineties. I mean fears
that the world would collapse on January one y two
K But the good thing about this M five is
that it would have kept running even if all the
computers in the world took a dirt nap. Like all
(10:46):
cars of the era, it was gloriously mechanical. It wasn't
dependent on satellite uplinks to find its way via Google Maps.
There were no over the air updates to keep it
software fresh. There was no electronic suspension, just mechanical dampers.
No electric power steering, just a hydraulic pump. Even the
(11:06):
engine's variable valve timing was controlled via oil pressure. It
was entirely kinetic, with just a few safety nets like
traction and stability control to keep the thing from falling
off the road. It's just all about tuning in refinement,
and you know, getting that sort of lapidary smoothness across
the whole car. And you know, this car is a
(11:28):
great high fi where at low speed you'd get terrific definition,
but when you crank it up, there's absolutely no distortion,
you know, just high fidelity. That's a very nice it is.
What I love is just how it's so liquid, it
just flows. The interior is perfect. This is totally driver oriented.
(11:53):
It's elegant, it's simple. The gauges are where they need
to be, there's nothing to fuss around with. And to me,
it's like, you know, if I was designing the ultimate
luxury car right now, I would have none of that
shit in it. I would just have a steering wheel
and maybe a radio. Yeah. One moment that made the
(12:14):
E thirty nine M five such a car culture hero
was when a guy named Alex Roy decided to take
the car and drive across the country as fast as
he could. He used the E thirty nine M five's
incongruity to his advantage. Big, comfortable, fast, and long legged,
a double take car, not the kind of machine that
(12:36):
looked like it would be doing one hundred and thirty
miles per hour across Oklahoma. Roy wanted to be the
latest person to beat the Cannonball Run coast to coast
driving record, famously set in nineteen seventy one by car
and driver editor Brock Yates, an American racing legend Dan Gurney.
The Cannonball Run was a real cross country event dreamed
(12:57):
up by Yates. It started at the Red Ball Garage
in New York City and ended at the Portofino Inn
in Rodondo Beach, California. It even spawned a couple of
very campy Cannonball Run movies. This is the story of
an average guy and a beautiful girl. Don't tell me
your Name. Burt Reynolds, Jackie chan Fara Fawcet, Dom DeLuise.
(13:20):
It was the car guys Godfather's one and two. They
all set out one day in an ambulance from New
York to California at one hundred and fifty miles per hour.
So in two thousand and six, Atlas Roy bundled up
all these threads and recreated his own Cannibal Drive from
(13:42):
the original start to the original finish. His car a
blue E thirty nine M five. It was done up
to look like a German police car, complete with all
sorts of copivating technology. I'm not sure if this made
him blend in or stand out. Either way, he made
it look like insane fun. He broke the record going
(14:05):
coast to coast in just thirty one hours and four minutes.
Alex will talk about his car in that drive all
day if you'll let him. But I like this version
for Alex. There was no better car for the transcontinental
run than the BMW M five with a five liter,
four hundred horsepower V eight. It was fast a top
speed of one. It's iced Tea describing the car in
(14:27):
a film called Apex The Secret Race across America with
the suspension tune for Germany's Auto Bond M five would
hold up under hours of triple digit speeds. And this
was a car you could drive through the night and
feel energized when you got out. Perfect for flying fast
and low across the continental US. Malcolm and I, however,
(14:50):
we're not out to set any records. We were just
looking for a good club sandwich. Also, the ride on
this car is the same. It just so. It's how
it could be so composed and yet so athletics like
it's an amazing trick. It's it's you know, it's a
muscle car, but it's absolutely a car you could drive
(15:11):
to the opera. You know. It's um just tuning and tuning.
And there was a guy who worked at BMW. His
name is Rich Brecas, and he was a really great
car guy and he was very very good and explaining
automotive engineering to English majors like me. And we were
(15:33):
at dinner one night and I asked him why are
BMW is so good? And this was when they were,
when they were, and when BMW's were just a cut
above of everything everything else, they responded like no other car.
They just felt better. They were more communicative, they had
better field, they were more alive. And he drew a
(15:53):
little graph, like an asymptotic line, and he said, Okay, here,
don low on this asemtote is where Audie stops tuning.
Up Here on the asmtote is where Mercedes stops tuning.
All the way out here to the right is where
we stop tuning. And what he meant by that was
(16:15):
this is about human feel and what the driver is experiencing. Yeah,
and keeping after, keeping after those little nuances and subtleties
of driver feel and response. That's what sports of ends.
Should be about. They should be about that sensitivity to
driver inputs and this thing. I mean, you turn the wheel,
(16:40):
you get a perfectly predictable response. Yeah, the steering is divine.
They actually went a technology back in the steering. They
went from rack and pinion to recirculating ball. When everybody
had gone to rack and pinion because it was a
little bit cheaper and easier to package. They went back
to recirculating ball steering because they had better feel. I
(17:01):
realize that. And so it has a little retual flavor. Yeah,
those those little nuances and just so smooth. This is
a car you can steer with the throttle pedel. So
when you're cruising around a racetrack and you're sort of
at the limit of the tires adhesion, if you give
(17:21):
it a little bit of gas, the car pushes a
little you take your foot off the gas, it tucks
in a little bit for a turn, and that you know,
you're not just driving it with the steering wheel. You're
driving it with the brakes, the throttle, and the car
is just moving and fluid and alive. That is so
(17:43):
so rare for Zedana. So the E thirty nine five
was pitch perfect meticulously tuned for the serious driver, the
person who appreciated how finally wrought it was. It was
the hatri Hanzo Sword of cars. Nowadays, though, the consensus
among serious drivers is that BMW as a whole isn't
(18:07):
quite what it was. That this one time maker of
the best sports at hands in the world, the ultimate
driving machines, if you will, is at parody or worse
with other carmakers, Which is why your producer Sam Dingman
asked me in Malcolm, what would you guys say changed
at BMW that makes them not as good anymore? They
(18:28):
wanted to sell cars to mainstream Americans? Basically, right, Yeah,
that's the short answer for sure. Beyond that, there is time.
Like Rich Brecas said at that dinner, time is the
secret ingredient. Time creates the handshake of trust you get
(18:52):
with a great car like the E thirty nine M five.
With all the cars BMW makes, now, how can they
possibly spend the time necessary to hone their edges? And
now they have you know, I x's and I fours
and four series and series and you know, all of
these cars. It's just a lot to manage and a
(19:14):
lot of cars to tune and Back when the E
thirty nine M five was around, BMW didn't make very
many cars. They didn't have this huge lineup of SUVs,
sedans and sports cars. You know, they weren't working on
electric vehicles and high performance sedans and all that stuff.
There's just so much time to go around, and the
(19:37):
E thirty nine M five was lavished with time. After
the break, we're going to drive the new BMW M
five and see how it measures up. This is just ducks.
I'm Eddie Altraman, and this is car Show Los Angeles, California,
(20:08):
not too far from the Cannibal run ended and Alex
Roy cracked that first cold one. Good morning. Wow, look
at this. Sam and I are at the wheel of
a metallic green two twenty two M five in competition trims.
Get out, okay, let me just get my recorder out again.
The real color is called Verdi Ermez. It has six
(20:30):
hundred and seventeen horsepower to Malcolm's cars three hundred and
ninety four. It costs one hundred and thirty eight thousand
dollars to Malcolm's seventy thousand, though Malcolm's car is three
thousand miles away and tucked back into winter storage. The
impression it left on me is vivid enough. Has all
this evolution led to a more engaging car, a better
(20:52):
sports dann a more fun ride? All right? So here
we are in this is the twenty twenty two and five.
There are tons of key differences, all of which I
describe as the difference between a digital car and an
analog car. But this car does not have a manual transmission.
(21:12):
It has a automatic transmission that's highly adaptive to your
driving style. And this car claims to get to know you.
It shifts intelligently, It knows if you're driving hard, and
it will hold gears for you. It will downshift for
you if you bend it into a corner really hard
and or set up for a corner, I should say,
(21:36):
So you know, all throughout this car you're going to
see the transition from an analog, very simple sort of
car to a much more complicated, much more software intensive machine.
The roads were driving are not like the ones in
(21:57):
upstate New York. The roads around here are impossibly smooth,
perfectly undulating vines crawling up the lush Palas Verdes hills.
They are the place tonic ideal of driving roads. The
video game version of reality. Same with the car. There's
(22:18):
a nagging video game like simulation to the whole thing.
Here's a list of what was mechanical in Malcolm's car
and is now electronically controlled. The shifter, the steering, the braking,
the suspension, the rear deferential And there's stuff in the
new M five that never even existed when Malcolm's car
(22:40):
was around. Stuff like electronically controlled all wheel drive, lane
keeping software that scans the road and sends a little
buzz to the steering wheel when you veer out of
your lane. Automatic emergency braking in case you don't react
quickly enough to the person slamming on their brakes in
front of you, blind spot warning which flashes a little
light in the side view mirror. Wi Fi, Apple car
(23:03):
Play in car apps like ways in Pandora, accessed via
Apple car Play, and as we'll see later in the episode,
something called just Your Control. The thing about great sports cars,
and I think this is also true of great sports
at ends, is that there's a level of simplicity there.
(23:23):
All of the efforts are transparent, all of the functioning
is transparent to the driver. But you know, the thing
about Malcolm's car the E thirty nine is that that
is a triumph of tuning, of honing and honing and honing.
It's very simple, analog stuff, no adaptive suspension, no software
(23:45):
and the suspension, no software in the transmission, no software
in the rear differential. It was just tuned by humans.
And you can really tell you you can really, I
mean you feel the artist's hand. Okay, I have to
digress here for a second. There's something I just can't
get out of my head when I'm driving this new
(24:06):
twenty twenty two M five. There's a record producer named
Rick Biatto with a popular YouTube channel. In one video,
he plays a clip of led Zeppelin drummer John Bonham
bashing away, an isolated track of him just jamming on
at your alle Let's hear what the unquantized version sounds like.
(24:35):
You can hear those dead. Then Biato plays a version
of the same bonhom beat that's been processed through the
computer and quantized. Quantizing is when you use digital technology
to perfect the timing and intervals between notes. Let's hear
the quantized one again, just for comparison. So stiff, it
(24:58):
just sounds dead. It sounds robotic sounds programmed. Bonhom is
widely regarded by drummers as the E thirty nine M
five of rock skinsman the His sound is crisp and ringy,
and he always seems to play right in the pocket.
But Biatto's exercise reveals that Bonhom's tempo is all over
(25:18):
the place. He's not perfect, far from it. His drumming
is sort of in conversation with Jimmy Page's guitar and
John Paul Jones's bass, reacting to them, moving the beat
around so it swings, so it grooves, so it feels alive.
The imperfections are what make the song work, what propels
(25:39):
it forward. The perfected beat Biatto made it feels lifeless.
So it is with the twenty twenty two BMWM five
perfect airbrushed, flawless. Also, to look at it, it's more
overtly sporty and aggressive. The sneak attack is gone. Nothing
(26:01):
under the radar about this thing. Our car was just
dragging green with yellow gold brake calipers, huge bronze wheels,
gigantic flared nostrils. You notice it. I mean, this is
an incredible card, don't get me wrong, But it doesn't
have the same level of feel and the same level
of engagement at every speed that the old M five
(26:21):
head is. I mean, listen to this. This is just nuts.
It's nus and it really livens up and it's it
feels tremendously sporty and fun. But the whole process is
being managed to buy electronics. Right, like triggering a line
of code, right, triggering a line of code. It's not
(26:43):
the real thing, Yeah, it's a it's a simulation of
the real thing. Yeah. In this new M five, you
can tailor the simulation through the central screen and console
mounted rotary dial. You can choose the engine response mode
you want, from laid back to face melting. You can
adjust the dampers from motel mattress soft to diamond tipped hard.
(27:06):
You can firm up the steering, hasten the shifts, speed
a portion torque around the car, all via the screen.
In the E thirty nine, there's none of that. There's
no customization beyond the sport mode, which, as we've established,
is superfluous. There are no settings to configure, no menus
to scroll through. It's the antithesis of the new M
(27:29):
five and this one. It's saying, look, we've created all
these customizations you can choose, just push a button and
will adapt to what you want. Whereas the old one,
it was like they were saying, this is what you want, yeah,
and we know it's best worthy chassis engineers, we know
what's good and this is our philosophy and we believe it,
(27:52):
and so should you. I mean there's an irony in
that choice, right you think, oh, well, you know, if
I can choose my chassis settings and my steering settings
and probably want to put it all together, I have
more choice. You know, I'm in more control. But you know,
the simple single setting approach of the old car ironically
(28:15):
gives you a greater feeling of control, not less this
car obviously, you know the ride is really supple. You
know it's a great car, there's no question about it.
But is it more fun to drive? It's certainly faster, right,
does it communicate with you more? I would say no.
I think there's a layer of mediation between this car
(28:40):
and its driver. It's bottom optimized. It's bottom without the swing,
the give, the tension, all this electronic virtual stuff, all
these non mechanical interfaces, they are a layer of mediation
between the human and the machine a thin film of artifice.
We might not be able to put words to it,
(29:01):
but we can feel it somewhere deep down in the
uncanny valley. We're talking about the old school versus the
new And you know, I don't want to sound like
a stick of the mud or that. You know, I
don't have an appreciation for what the new sort of
rules are and how incredible the performance of some of
(29:25):
these machines can be. But there's a difference between the
kind of on paper gains like in grip and shift speed,
in horsepower and torque. There's a there's a real gap
(29:46):
between that on paper stuff and how the car makes
you feel. Yeah. Yeah, it's like subtraction by addition almost. Yeah.
I am really not trying to dunk on the new
M five. It's not some outlier, a purely digital, cold
robotic machine in a sea of warm automotive dolphins. All
(30:10):
cars are like this. Now it takes us back to
the original question, buy is that old M five so memorable?
Why do we love it so because it's analog and
the new car is digital? Because they had time then
they don't have now. Truly, they don't make them like
they used to does it result in a car that
(30:33):
makes you happier? I would say no, yeah, yeah, it's
it's deep down, it's about agency, deep down, our kind
of Olympic system. Our lizard brain knows that we're not
in control and we don't love that. Yeah. Yeah, Hey, guys,
(31:09):
how's it going through the miracle of Bluetooth hands free calling?
We thought we'd check back in with Malcolm? So, what
are you in the Are you in the five right now? Yeah,
we're at the wheel of the M five. He wanted
to know what it was like. We wanted to let
him know to keep his old car six hundred and
seven teen um mostly unusable horsepower. We're talking about this idea,
(31:37):
we're circling this idea of like index of usability right, um? Yeah,
how much of the car can you use safely on
public roads within your level of ability and skill? So
that's fun and not completely dangerous and terrifying. And that's
(31:59):
where this car really falls down to me. It's so
incredibly competent and powerful and does so many great things,
and but where are you going to use it? Yeah? No,
it's like a total waste of time. I don't even understand, Like,
so you're gonna You're really gonna putter around town in
(32:20):
the in the Walmart parking line in a car with
seven hunt a horseball. Right, It's like, it's like the
whole thing ridiculous. We've gone past the reasonable peak of
these kinds of automobiles. There's all this incredible amount of
brain power that's being used to serve a very questionable
(32:44):
and marginal end. I want to liberate the engineers of
bmwho and like put them on a project that's worthy
of their intelligence and expertise. I once attended a lecture
by a guy who really building at engineer out of
Stanford who figured out how to make a compostible toilet. Yeah,
(33:06):
all you needed was sand, gravel, dirt, and a lot
of worms. And like, this is a guy who could have,
in a previous iteration, could have gone to work for
you know, BMW or General Electric or instead he decided,
(33:29):
is there a way to get worms to be the
active component in one of the world's most pressing problems?
And the answer is yes, Yes. The people didn't understand
that you had to aerate. So you just have a
hole and you poop in the hole and the worms
break it down. So quickly. It doesn't even smell wow.
(33:52):
But this is a smart dude who, instead of working
on the final tweet to the internal combustion engine or
adding twenty horsepower to a six hundred fifty horsepower car,
decided he would like he would fix toilets and do
something that's useful to the health of humanity. Exactly. That's
(34:17):
a worthy problem for the person who extracted an extra
hundred horsepower out of the PMW. Maybe one day Malcolm's
vision will come true and we'll get the world's best
engineers to focus on solving problems that actually make the
world a better place. Until then, the last thing I
(34:38):
want to show you is we're talking about audio and
digital stuff. Here's the convergence of it. I can control
the radio, I can control the radio vine with hindo finger.
I'm not even touching the knob. You're waving your finger
in a circle, and I'm waving and swiping at the
screen like Tom Cruise and Minority Report. I'm just making
(35:04):
a circular motion with my finger. That's just your control.
That's the action layer. Okay, I'm terrified. Right. Car Show
(35:32):
is written and hosted by me Eddie Alterman. It's produced
by Sam Dingman, Jacob Smith and Amy Gaines. Our editor
is Jen Guera. Original music and mastering by Ben Tomiday.
Our executive producer is Mia Lobell. Our show art was
designed by Sean Karney and airbrushed by Greg Lafeever. Our
(35:54):
patron Saints are the Tom Allad and Justine Lane. Big
thank you to my guest and BMW and five enthusiasts
Malcolm Gladwell. And thanks to the folks of BMW for
the ride in the twenty twenty two M five competition.
Car Show is a production of Pushkin Industries. If you
love this show and others from Pushkin Industries, consider subscribing
(36:16):
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(00:37):
Pushkin Plus on the Car Show page, in Apple Podcasts,
or at pushkin dot Fm. I'm super nervous driving your car.
Oh no, don't be. It's like, you know, it's funny
in my old golf r I felt it in vulnerable
and the same thing into CALICYTSD. I feel like I
(01:00):
really feel like they're going to cover up any errors
you make. Yeah, this card there is a little hint
of danger. I feel like you're a little bit on
your you know, they're you know, they send you off
and they say, you know, be well, my son. Isn't
(01:21):
that a good thing? Doesn't that keep you? It does keeps. Yeah,
they're no safety nets, and that's I think probably good
for the human species in general. A little automotive Darwinism
always focuses the mind. I'm Eddie Alterman, and this is
(01:41):
Car Show, my podcast about why we drive what we
drive I'm with my friend and fellow car geek, Malcolm Gladwell.
We're on the pockmarked, slushy switchback roads of upstate New York.
I first met Malcolm back in twenty thirteen when he
chided me about something I'd written in Car and Driver.
(02:02):
We've been friends ever since, and today we are on
a vision quest. We are looking for the soul of
the sports sedan. We are also looking for lunch, and
we're doing it at the wheel of Gladwell's zone. Two
thousand and three BMW M five. This is a car
(02:25):
that is holy accepted by me and most other car
geeks as the best sports sedan of all time, not
just of its generation. Not just the best sports sedan
that BMW ever made. No, the best fast forward door
that ever was. And it's no wonder BMW made it.
(02:45):
BMW built its reputation on sports sedans and coops, not
sports cars. Going back to the sixties, BMW made upright
little bricks harboring dark souls, fast terrible goblins from the
Black Forest of Germany with names like two thousand and
two and three twenty five I X. They would sneak
(03:06):
up behind your Mustang on a moonlit two lane row
and terrorize you for however long it took them to pass.
There are many jokes about the people who own them.
What's the difference between a porcupine and a BMW. Porcupines
have their pricks on the outside. BMW sports sedans were
(03:29):
always better than their sports cars. They didn't make flying
pizza slices like Ferrari or Pantera did. They made cars
that flew under the radar, which is why many people,
cops included, might look at this high performance version of
the respectable five series and see just another country club car.
(03:49):
But to those in the know, this stealth factor is
a huge part of the appeal. It's what makes the
M five so exotic, and it is why we are
somewhat comfortable doing extra legal speeds on the back roads
of the cop infested Hudson Valley. This is no flying
pizza slice on its surface, it's just a middle of
(04:10):
the pack BMW. But underneath, that's where the magic happens.
This version of the BMW M five is the most
responsive sports sedan ever built, the most poised, the most sensitive.
We've got to put it in sport. Oh yeah, it's
got the It is a sport. Sport is Yeah, definitely.
(04:33):
The throttle response is dramatically quicker. Yeah with sport. I'm
offended they have a sports setting. It should just be
too to sport, right, Like I don't. I don't person
who would drive this car and not wanted a sport mode.
It's kind of like eleven on Nigel toughnel stamp. Yeah, exactly.
We need that little extra push over the edge, you
(04:56):
push the sport punt. But it's just like alive in
your hands in a way that modern cars aren't, and
yet it still feels totally modern. That's why I think
this is such a high water mark for cars in general.
This version of the M five hit the market twenty
three years ago. A few sports at hands came before it,
and many came after it, but it is widely accepted
(05:18):
in the car community as the goat the peak never bettered.
I know you're thinking, no way this can be true.
Those of us who canonized that must just be nostalgic
for the time. It represented a time of tomagotchis and
beanie babies, spice girls and backstreet boys who wouldn't pine
(05:38):
for those days. But just as backstreet boys become backstreet
middle aged men. No car can remain at the peak
for twenty years. If you look at the numbers, acceleration breaking,
road holding cars don't peak. Really, they keep getting faster, grippier, quieter,
(05:59):
more comfortable, more reliable, better, better, better. They are quite
literally vehicles of progress. Today cars are digitally remastered to perfection,
with all kinds of automated wizardry, all kinds of management software,
and with all the flaws removed, whereas premillennial cars are
(06:20):
mostly just straightforward mechanical parts, straight up analog. By the
sheer empirical evidence like acceleration and fuel economy, the notion
that the newer digital car is better than the old
analog one is manifestly true. And yet here we are
behind the wheel of a two thousand and three BMW
(06:41):
M five, and here I am with the claim that
it's still, almost twenty years later, the best sports nan
of all time. How can this be? How can a
car that came out two decades ago still be the
top of the mountain. On this episode of Car Show,
we're going to try to answer that burning question. We'll
(07:04):
put old versus new. The two thousand and three E
thirty nine M five versus a twenty twenty two M
five competition. We are going to see if my assertion
holds up or if I'm just nostalgic for that time
I tread out to be a backup dancer for the
backstreet boys. Oh it's so good. It's so so good
(07:52):
that engine engine note a load. I could fall asleep
to this engine. Notice I can associate it's so like smooth,
smooth and beautiful. We are attacking the mountain rows of
the Hudson Valley and Malcolm Gladwell's cold silver two thousand
and THREEWM five. The sky is spitting out a faint sleet.
(08:14):
These roads are narrow and frost heat with the added
threat of wandering livestock. This is the perfect crucible for
this car, a test of body composure, engine response, and
ride quality. We'll soon repeat the same exercise on the
West Coast in more perfect road and weather conditions with
(08:37):
an allegedly more perfect twenty twenty two BMWM five competition.
But this won't be a traditional car magazine comparison test
out on the test track in controlled conditions. It can't be.
For one thing, BMW want to give us the new
car in New York to go toe to toe with
Malcolm's something about summer tires and too much snow and
(08:58):
my driving record. But even if we can't drive them
a to beyond the track, or even over the same
roads in the same conditions, I am convinced we'll get
a strong impression of which one is the better sports sedan,
which one fulfills its mission better, which one is more
fun to drive? And most important, why it must be said,
(09:21):
the notion that a big German sedan should be fun
to drive might seem ludicrous. This looks like a banker's car.
The whole point of these things is to create an
air of respectability and gravitas, not tire smoke. A midsize
German sedan like this one would seem to lack a
certain joadaviv. But while it might look like a regular
(09:43):
old BMW five series, look closer at the two thousand
and three M five. It sits lower. The M five's
fenders have a more pronounced flare, the wheels are wider.
It's way more badass than other lesser BMW five series cars.
(10:03):
The M five is the work of BMW's internal Motorsport division.
The Clouses and Helga's who make BMW's racing cars, hence
the M. This generation of BMW five series had the
internal code name E thirty nine. So pretentious BMW geeks
love to call this car the E thirty nine M five. Yo.
(10:23):
Here we're using code nth Anyway, the E thirty nine
five came out in the late nineties. I mean fears
that the world would collapse on January one y two
K But the good thing about this M five is
that it would have kept running even if all the
computers in the world took a dirt nap. Like all
(10:46):
cars of the era, it was gloriously mechanical. It wasn't
dependent on satellite uplinks to find its way via Google Maps.
There were no over the air updates to keep it
software fresh. There was no electronic suspension, just mechanical dampers.
No electric power steering, just a hydraulic pump. Even the
(11:06):
engine's variable valve timing was controlled via oil pressure. It
was entirely kinetic, with just a few safety nets like
traction and stability control to keep the thing from falling
off the road. It's just all about tuning in refinement,
and you know, getting that sort of lapidary smoothness across
the whole car. And you know, this car is a
(11:28):
great high fi where at low speed you'd get terrific definition,
but when you crank it up, there's absolutely no distortion,
you know, just high fidelity. That's a very nice it is.
What I love is just how it's so liquid, it
just flows. The interior is perfect. This is totally driver oriented.
(11:53):
It's elegant, it's simple. The gauges are where they need
to be, there's nothing to fuss around with. And to me,
it's like, you know, if I was designing the ultimate
luxury car right now, I would have none of that
shit in it. I would just have a steering wheel
and maybe a radio. Yeah. One moment that made the
(12:14):
E thirty nine M five such a car culture hero
was when a guy named Alex Roy decided to take
the car and drive across the country as fast as
he could. He used the E thirty nine M five's
incongruity to his advantage. Big, comfortable, fast, and long legged,
a double take car, not the kind of machine that
(12:36):
looked like it would be doing one hundred and thirty
miles per hour across Oklahoma. Roy wanted to be the
latest person to beat the Cannonball Run coast to coast
driving record, famously set in nineteen seventy one by car
and driver editor Brock Yates, an American racing legend Dan Gurney.
The Cannonball Run was a real cross country event dreamed
(12:57):
up by Yates. It started at the Red Ball Garage
in New York City and ended at the Portofino Inn
in Rodondo Beach, California. It even spawned a couple of
very campy Cannonball Run movies. This is the story of
an average guy and a beautiful girl. Don't tell me
your Name. Burt Reynolds, Jackie chan Fara Fawcet, Dom DeLuise.
(13:20):
It was the car guys Godfather's one and two. They
all set out one day in an ambulance from New
York to California at one hundred and fifty miles per hour.
So in two thousand and six, Atlas Roy bundled up
all these threads and recreated his own Cannibal Drive from
(13:42):
the original start to the original finish. His car a
blue E thirty nine M five. It was done up
to look like a German police car, complete with all
sorts of copivating technology. I'm not sure if this made
him blend in or stand out. Either way, he made
it look like insane fun. He broke the record going
(14:05):
coast to coast in just thirty one hours and four minutes.
Alex will talk about his car in that drive all
day if you'll let him. But I like this version
for Alex. There was no better car for the transcontinental
run than the BMW M five with a five liter,
four hundred horsepower V eight. It was fast a top
speed of one. It's iced Tea describing the car in
(14:27):
a film called Apex The Secret Race across America with
the suspension tune for Germany's Auto Bond M five would
hold up under hours of triple digit speeds. And this
was a car you could drive through the night and
feel energized when you got out. Perfect for flying fast
and low across the continental US. Malcolm and I, however,
(14:50):
we're not out to set any records. We were just
looking for a good club sandwich. Also, the ride on
this car is the same. It just so. It's how
it could be so composed and yet so athletics like
it's an amazing trick. It's it's you know, it's a
muscle car, but it's absolutely a car you could drive
(15:11):
to the opera. You know. It's um just tuning and tuning.
And there was a guy who worked at BMW. His
name is Rich Brecas, and he was a really great
car guy and he was very very good and explaining
automotive engineering to English majors like me. And we were
(15:33):
at dinner one night and I asked him why are
BMW is so good? And this was when they were,
when they were, and when BMW's were just a cut
above of everything everything else, they responded like no other car.
They just felt better. They were more communicative, they had
better field, they were more alive. And he drew a
(15:53):
little graph, like an asymptotic line, and he said, Okay, here,
don low on this asemtote is where Audie stops tuning.
Up Here on the asmtote is where Mercedes stops tuning.
All the way out here to the right is where
we stop tuning. And what he meant by that was
(16:15):
this is about human feel and what the driver is experiencing. Yeah,
and keeping after, keeping after those little nuances and subtleties
of driver feel and response. That's what sports of ends.
Should be about. They should be about that sensitivity to
driver inputs and this thing. I mean, you turn the wheel,
(16:40):
you get a perfectly predictable response. Yeah, the steering is divine.
They actually went a technology back in the steering. They
went from rack and pinion to recirculating ball. When everybody
had gone to rack and pinion because it was a
little bit cheaper and easier to package. They went back
to recirculating ball steering because they had better feel. I
(17:01):
realize that. And so it has a little retual flavor. Yeah,
those those little nuances and just so smooth. This is
a car you can steer with the throttle pedel. So
when you're cruising around a racetrack and you're sort of
at the limit of the tires adhesion, if you give
(17:21):
it a little bit of gas, the car pushes a
little you take your foot off the gas, it tucks
in a little bit for a turn, and that you know,
you're not just driving it with the steering wheel. You're
driving it with the brakes, the throttle, and the car
is just moving and fluid and alive. That is so
(17:43):
so rare for Zedana. So the E thirty nine five
was pitch perfect meticulously tuned for the serious driver, the
person who appreciated how finally wrought it was. It was
the hatri Hanzo Sword of cars. Nowadays, though, the consensus
among serious drivers is that BMW as a whole isn't
(18:07):
quite what it was. That this one time maker of
the best sports at hands in the world, the ultimate
driving machines, if you will, is at parody or worse
with other carmakers, Which is why your producer Sam Dingman
asked me in Malcolm, what would you guys say changed
at BMW that makes them not as good anymore? They
(18:28):
wanted to sell cars to mainstream Americans? Basically, right, Yeah,
that's the short answer for sure. Beyond that, there is time.
Like Rich Brecas said at that dinner, time is the
secret ingredient. Time creates the handshake of trust you get
(18:52):
with a great car like the E thirty nine M five.
With all the cars BMW makes, now, how can they
possibly spend the time necessary to hone their edges? And
now they have you know, I x's and I fours
and four series and series and you know, all of
these cars. It's just a lot to manage and a
(19:14):
lot of cars to tune and Back when the E
thirty nine M five was around, BMW didn't make very
many cars. They didn't have this huge lineup of SUVs,
sedans and sports cars. You know, they weren't working on
electric vehicles and high performance sedans and all that stuff.
There's just so much time to go around, and the
(19:37):
E thirty nine M five was lavished with time. After
the break, we're going to drive the new BMW M
five and see how it measures up. This is just ducks.
I'm Eddie Altraman, and this is car Show Los Angeles, California,
(20:08):
not too far from the Cannibal run ended and Alex
Roy cracked that first cold one. Good morning. Wow, look
at this. Sam and I are at the wheel of
a metallic green two twenty two M five in competition trims.
Get out, okay, let me just get my recorder out again.
The real color is called Verdi Ermez. It has six
(20:30):
hundred and seventeen horsepower to Malcolm's cars three hundred and
ninety four. It costs one hundred and thirty eight thousand
dollars to Malcolm's seventy thousand, though Malcolm's car is three
thousand miles away and tucked back into winter storage. The
impression it left on me is vivid enough. Has all
this evolution led to a more engaging car, a better
(20:52):
sports dann a more fun ride? All right? So here
we are in this is the twenty twenty two and five.
There are tons of key differences, all of which I
describe as the difference between a digital car and an
analog car. But this car does not have a manual transmission.
(21:12):
It has a automatic transmission that's highly adaptive to your
driving style. And this car claims to get to know you.
It shifts intelligently, It knows if you're driving hard, and
it will hold gears for you. It will downshift for
you if you bend it into a corner really hard
and or set up for a corner, I should say,
(21:36):
So you know, all throughout this car you're going to
see the transition from an analog, very simple sort of
car to a much more complicated, much more software intensive machine.
The roads were driving are not like the ones in
(21:57):
upstate New York. The roads around here are impossibly smooth,
perfectly undulating vines crawling up the lush Palas Verdes hills.
They are the place tonic ideal of driving roads. The
video game version of reality. Same with the car. There's
(22:18):
a nagging video game like simulation to the whole thing.
Here's a list of what was mechanical in Malcolm's car
and is now electronically controlled. The shifter, the steering, the braking,
the suspension, the rear deferential And there's stuff in the
new M five that never even existed when Malcolm's car
(22:40):
was around. Stuff like electronically controlled all wheel drive, lane
keeping software that scans the road and sends a little
buzz to the steering wheel when you veer out of
your lane. Automatic emergency braking in case you don't react
quickly enough to the person slamming on their brakes in
front of you, blind spot warning which flashes a little
light in the side view mirror. Wi Fi, Apple car
(23:03):
Play in car apps like ways in Pandora, accessed via
Apple car Play, and as we'll see later in the episode,
something called just Your Control. The thing about great sports cars,
and I think this is also true of great sports
at ends, is that there's a level of simplicity there.
(23:23):
All of the efforts are transparent, all of the functioning
is transparent to the driver. But you know, the thing
about Malcolm's car the E thirty nine is that that
is a triumph of tuning, of honing and honing and honing.
It's very simple, analog stuff, no adaptive suspension, no software
(23:45):
and the suspension, no software in the transmission, no software
in the rear differential. It was just tuned by humans.
And you can really tell you you can really, I
mean you feel the artist's hand. Okay, I have to
digress here for a second. There's something I just can't
get out of my head when I'm driving this new
(24:06):
twenty twenty two M five. There's a record producer named
Rick Biatto with a popular YouTube channel. In one video,
he plays a clip of led Zeppelin drummer John Bonham
bashing away, an isolated track of him just jamming on
at your alle Let's hear what the unquantized version sounds like.
(24:35):
You can hear those dead. Then Biato plays a version
of the same bonhom beat that's been processed through the
computer and quantized. Quantizing is when you use digital technology
to perfect the timing and intervals between notes. Let's hear
the quantized one again, just for comparison. So stiff, it
(24:58):
just sounds dead. It sounds robotic sounds programmed. Bonhom is
widely regarded by drummers as the E thirty nine M
five of rock skinsman the His sound is crisp and ringy,
and he always seems to play right in the pocket.
But Biatto's exercise reveals that Bonhom's tempo is all over
(25:18):
the place. He's not perfect, far from it. His drumming
is sort of in conversation with Jimmy Page's guitar and
John Paul Jones's bass, reacting to them, moving the beat
around so it swings, so it grooves, so it feels alive.
The imperfections are what make the song work, what propels
(25:39):
it forward. The perfected beat Biatto made it feels lifeless.
So it is with the twenty twenty two BMWM five
perfect airbrushed, flawless. Also, to look at it, it's more
overtly sporty and aggressive. The sneak attack is gone. Nothing
(26:01):
under the radar about this thing. Our car was just
dragging green with yellow gold brake calipers, huge bronze wheels,
gigantic flared nostrils. You notice it. I mean, this is
an incredible card, don't get me wrong, But it doesn't
have the same level of feel and the same level
of engagement at every speed that the old M five
(26:21):
head is. I mean, listen to this. This is just nuts.
It's nus and it really livens up and it's it
feels tremendously sporty and fun. But the whole process is
being managed to buy electronics. Right, like triggering a line
of code, right, triggering a line of code. It's not
(26:43):
the real thing, Yeah, it's a it's a simulation of
the real thing. Yeah. In this new M five, you
can tailor the simulation through the central screen and console
mounted rotary dial. You can choose the engine response mode
you want, from laid back to face melting. You can
adjust the dampers from motel mattress soft to diamond tipped hard.
(27:06):
You can firm up the steering, hasten the shifts, speed
a portion torque around the car, all via the screen.
In the E thirty nine, there's none of that. There's
no customization beyond the sport mode, which, as we've established,
is superfluous. There are no settings to configure, no menus
to scroll through. It's the antithesis of the new M
(27:29):
five and this one. It's saying, look, we've created all
these customizations you can choose, just push a button and
will adapt to what you want. Whereas the old one,
it was like they were saying, this is what you want, yeah,
and we know it's best worthy chassis engineers, we know
what's good and this is our philosophy and we believe it,
(27:52):
and so should you. I mean there's an irony in
that choice, right you think, oh, well, you know, if
I can choose my chassis settings and my steering settings
and probably want to put it all together, I have
more choice. You know, I'm in more control. But you know,
the simple single setting approach of the old car ironically
(28:15):
gives you a greater feeling of control, not less this
car obviously, you know the ride is really supple. You
know it's a great car, there's no question about it.
But is it more fun to drive? It's certainly faster, right,
does it communicate with you more? I would say no.
I think there's a layer of mediation between this car
(28:40):
and its driver. It's bottom optimized. It's bottom without the swing,
the give, the tension, all this electronic virtual stuff, all
these non mechanical interfaces, they are a layer of mediation
between the human and the machine a thin film of artifice.
We might not be able to put words to it,
(29:01):
but we can feel it somewhere deep down in the
uncanny valley. We're talking about the old school versus the
new And you know, I don't want to sound like
a stick of the mud or that. You know, I
don't have an appreciation for what the new sort of
rules are and how incredible the performance of some of
(29:25):
these machines can be. But there's a difference between the
kind of on paper gains like in grip and shift speed,
in horsepower and torque. There's a there's a real gap
(29:46):
between that on paper stuff and how the car makes
you feel. Yeah. Yeah, it's like subtraction by addition almost. Yeah.
I am really not trying to dunk on the new
M five. It's not some outlier, a purely digital, cold
robotic machine in a sea of warm automotive dolphins. All
(30:10):
cars are like this. Now it takes us back to
the original question, buy is that old M five so memorable?
Why do we love it so because it's analog and
the new car is digital? Because they had time then
they don't have now. Truly, they don't make them like
they used to does it result in a car that
(30:33):
makes you happier? I would say no, yeah, yeah, it's
it's deep down, it's about agency, deep down, our kind
of Olympic system. Our lizard brain knows that we're not
in control and we don't love that. Yeah. Yeah, Hey, guys,
(31:09):
how's it going through the miracle of Bluetooth hands free calling?
We thought we'd check back in with Malcolm? So, what
are you in the Are you in the five right now? Yeah,
we're at the wheel of the M five. He wanted
to know what it was like. We wanted to let
him know to keep his old car six hundred and
seven teen um mostly unusable horsepower. We're talking about this idea,
(31:37):
we're circling this idea of like index of usability right, um? Yeah,
how much of the car can you use safely on
public roads within your level of ability and skill? So
that's fun and not completely dangerous and terrifying. And that's
(31:59):
where this car really falls down to me. It's so
incredibly competent and powerful and does so many great things,
and but where are you going to use it? Yeah? No,
it's like a total waste of time. I don't even understand, Like,
so you're gonna You're really gonna putter around town in
(32:20):
the in the Walmart parking line in a car with
seven hunt a horseball. Right, It's like, it's like the
whole thing ridiculous. We've gone past the reasonable peak of
these kinds of automobiles. There's all this incredible amount of
brain power that's being used to serve a very questionable
(32:44):
and marginal end. I want to liberate the engineers of
bmwho and like put them on a project that's worthy
of their intelligence and expertise. I once attended a lecture
by a guy who really building at engineer out of
Stanford who figured out how to make a compostible toilet. Yeah,
(33:06):
all you needed was sand, gravel, dirt, and a lot
of worms. And like, this is a guy who could have,
in a previous iteration, could have gone to work for
you know, BMW or General Electric or instead he decided,
(33:29):
is there a way to get worms to be the
active component in one of the world's most pressing problems?
And the answer is yes, Yes. The people didn't understand
that you had to aerate. So you just have a
hole and you poop in the hole and the worms
break it down. So quickly. It doesn't even smell wow.
(33:52):
But this is a smart dude who, instead of working
on the final tweet to the internal combustion engine or
adding twenty horsepower to a six hundred fifty horsepower car,
decided he would like he would fix toilets and do
something that's useful to the health of humanity. Exactly. That's
(34:17):
a worthy problem for the person who extracted an extra
hundred horsepower out of the PMW. Maybe one day Malcolm's
vision will come true and we'll get the world's best
engineers to focus on solving problems that actually make the
world a better place. Until then, the last thing I
(34:38):
want to show you is we're talking about audio and
digital stuff. Here's the convergence of it. I can control
the radio, I can control the radio vine with hindo finger.
I'm not even touching the knob. You're waving your finger
in a circle, and I'm waving and swiping at the
screen like Tom Cruise and Minority Report. I'm just making
(35:04):
a circular motion with my finger. That's just your control.
That's the action layer. Okay, I'm terrified. Right. Car Show
(35:32):
is written and hosted by me Eddie Alterman. It's produced
by Sam Dingman, Jacob Smith and Amy Gaines. Our editor
is Jen Guera. Original music and mastering by Ben Tomiday.
Our executive producer is Mia Lobell. Our show art was
designed by Sean Karney and airbrushed by Greg Lafeever. Our
(35:54):
patron Saints are the Tom Allad and Justine Lane. Big
thank you to my guest and BMW and five enthusiasts
Malcolm Gladwell. And thanks to the folks of BMW for
the ride in the twenty twenty two M five competition.
Car Show is a production of Pushkin Industries. If you
love this show and others from Pushkin Industries, consider subscribing
(36:16):
to Pushkin Plus. Pushkin Plus is a podcast subscription that
offers bonus content and uninterrupted listening for four ninety nine
a month. Look for Pushkin Plus on Apple podcast subscriptions.
To find more Pushkin podcasts, listen on the iHeartRadio app,
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