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Originally Posted by neo007 Hey!
Not sure if this is the right tread to give my inputs or get some opinion, but i found this to be the only discussing the F10 M5 & didn't feel the need to start a new thread.
A friend of mine has been looking to buy a performance sedan for some time & we had shortlisted the Jaguar XFR,Mercedes C63, BMW M5 & Audi S4.
We had driven the C63 eariler in may & he did'nt really like it.
We had a test drive of the M5 at Infinity Motors recently & my friend is blown , it does pretty much everything that he expected & really contemplating to buy one even without trying the S4 as it may take a lot of time to get one.
We had a few questions.
1) If you order one does it take 4-5 months for delivery if you do not go for a pre configured vehicle?
2)Coming form a guy who owns a Land rover discovery 4 & a 5 year old 525d, How challenging is to maintain one. i,e. costs,intervals of changing tryes etc?
TIA |
Hi Neo,
I just saw your post and I'll try to answer some of your questions and chime-in with my own opinion as well.
To begin with your friend is looking at two distinctly different classes of car. The C63 and S4 are fairly compact, while the M5 and XFR are quite large. Even within those two groups, the S4 and XFR are the lower cost / lower performance option vs the C63 and M5.
The S4 is by some margin the cheapest car of the lot and it will be very much less capable in purely dynamic terms than something like an M5. Having said that, it should be a fair bit more fuel efficient than the others, it's reasonably quick in a straight line and is more car than most people would need.
The C63 is a bit of a hooligan. It sounds absolutely mental, tries to oversteer at every opportunity (unless you have all the nannies on) and is generally fun to drive (apart from the lack of a proper manual gearbox, but then none of these cars is going to give you that option over here, as I understand it). It's a small, fast saloon and great at going in straight lines, slightly less great going around corners neatly.
The XFR is a very capable, very comfortable, decent sized car. If you don't mind my asking, how old is your friend? Call it prejudice on my part, but frankly I don't think the XFR (or the M5 for that matter) is for people who truly enjoy driving hard and, imo are for older guys. They're both VERY fast though, so if that's all you want out of your car, they'll both fit the bill. The XFR struggles to put its power down due to massive torque and, as a consequence, isn't as quick as it perhaps ought to be. It's still a great fast saloon though and it's a fair bit cheaper than an M5.
The M5 is clearly the most capable of the lot, but then it needs to be because it is also considerably more expensive than the other three cars in this list. In many ways it's a do-it-all car. It can be cosseting and comfortable when you want to be sensible and it can also supercar bait when the need arises. Having said that, as someone who owns an M3 with a stick shift, I don't really enjoy driving the F10 M5 anywhere near as much as I thought I would. It's a completely different car, faster, more comfortable, more spacious even, but much less fun than a manual M3.
I can also tell you that all these cars apart from the S4 are going to struggle to put their power down neatly on our crap roads. Even on well surfaced cement roads, the C63, XFR and M5 take some skill to launch seriously fast and, even then, most often, the traction and stability controls will be intervening a lot, unless you turn them off, which I'm not sure all the cars allow you to do.
Bottom line is, try them all if it's at all possible. From what you've said I don't think your friend is going to be impressed with any of the other three now that he's driven the M5. If cost isn't a consideration that's the car I'd pick from the four you've mentioned.
As to the costs and maintenance angle, all of these cars will be considerably more expensive to maintain than a 525D. Tyres alone cost way too much over here and are, for the most part, not available when you want them and have to be special ordered at the most unbelievably stupid prices. I'm talking about 50-60k and up per tyre. The S4 will probably be the lightest on its tyres, the other three will fry their rear tyres in around 9-10 Kms with even very occasional hooning! If you want to have a lot of fun without your traction and stability controls, you can kill a set of rears in these cars in 3 mins. As for fuel...what do I say...with 97 octane nudging 100 bucks a litre and only going up, these cars will all be very expensive on that front as well. The S4 will fare the best here again, the XFR and M5 should be about on a par and the C63 will be the worst.
As regards maintenance, BMW offers the BSI plan for the M5, I'm not exactly sure what it costs but it'll be 5L+ to the best of my knowledge. It's still well worth it, so opt for it, because everything costs more than it should here and if anything goes wrong, parts and labour are expensive. Not sure whether Audi, Merc and Jag offer a similar all-inclusive extended warranty, so check on that.
So that's it then. Let us know which car finally wins and get some pics up for us all to have a good gawk at!