High Five

On Portugal’s brilliant mountain roads, Shapur Kotwal finds out if the all-new BMW 5-series is more luxurious and better to drive.

Sunny Portugal is a country full of brilliant driving roads. Often chosen as the venue for new car test drives,it has both snaking mountain roads and undulating coastal highways, perfect for hours and hours of driving. This is especially true in and around the capital Lisbon, where there’s a veritable buffet of great drives. There are tight and twisty bits that help evaluate the agility of a car; long open corners where high-speed stability can be checked; and bits where there are plenty of changes in elevation too – good for sussing out pitch sensitivity. Or a car’s propensity to bob up and down. BMW must be confident of how well the new 5-series drives.

DOES IT DRIVE LIKE A BMW?

Still, initial impressions aren’t very positive. That sharp response you get from behind the wheel of a 3-series isn’t there and there’s a numbness to the steering, which is disconcerting. Things improve as we move from tighter traffic to more open sections. Our route out from the Lisbon airport takes us over a massive suspension bridge, and once we have a bit of speed up on the dial, the new 5 tightens up.

Then we go straight from a wide open four-lane expressway to a single-carriage road. We pass a few villages along the way and are held up in a bit of traffic. But then before we know it we are greeted by an azure blue sky and miles of craggy coastline, replete with the white surf pounding rocky shores. The best part, however, is the road – it looks like a roller-coaster track that’s been stuck onto a cliff face.