2018 BMW 520d Test Drive Review

Performance – Under the very long bonnet is the familiar 2.0-litre, 4-cylinder diesel engine. It unleashes 188 horses at 4000 RPM along with a torque rating of 400 Nm from 1750-2000 RPM, mated to an 8-speed automatic gearbox. The oil-burner feels quiet and refined when you fire up the 520d. Get going and the diesel motor continues to impress with its driveability. In the city, the 5 feels very easy to drive with good low-end torque and power delivery coming up smoothly. Eco Pro mode works very well on our congested roads because power delivery feels much more controlled in this and the sedan doesn’t feel too aggressive. This mode also helps you extract better fuel efficiency.

The 520d offers good performance and doesn’t disappoint on fuel efficiency too

The 20d has a very good mid-range with a very good wave of torque coming in as soon as the turbo kicks in at a notch below 2000 RPM and it goes smoothly beyond 4000 RPM. In City mode, the engine starts feeling much more livelier and responds to accelerator inputs in a better way, churning out more performance than the Eco Pro mode. The gearbox is excellent with its shifts and it kind of adapts to your driving styling after a few hundred kms. If you feel the need to drive aggressively, Sport mode comes in to be useful here because it improves engine response and also holds onto higher RPMs in lower gears so that you are always riding in the meat of the power band.

The BMW 520d offers very good driveability be it city roads or empty highways and is a car that won’t disappoint. Sure, it isn’t as quick or agile as the ferocious 530d M-Sport, but performance from this engine is going to suffice most people who aren’t looking for something as powerful as the 530d. Talking about the figures now, 100 km/hr comes up in top gear at around 1500 RPM, meaning that the car runs on really low RPMs when you’re cruising down on the highway, resulting in good fuel efficiency too. On our tests, we extracted around 10-11 km/l in a mix of driving at snail speeds and also exploiting the power band whenever we found a long empty stretch. If you’re wondering about 0-100 km/hr, our VBOX tests gave us a timing of 7.96 seconds.

Driving Dynamics – When we talk about the fun-to-drive factor, the new 5-Series feels much better than the older model. The steering feels more precise, it gives a bit more feedback and weighs up nicely at high speeds too, offering a very confident drive. The 520d is extremely agile and the chassis suits perfectly whether you want to just cruise down the motorway or go around blasting the twisties. The 5-Series feels very stable all the time and passenger movement inside the cabin is also very controlled. The tyres have stupendous amount of grip and the brakes have excellent bite too. The new 5-Series just doesn’t disappoint on the driving pleasure front.

It also feels much more comfortable than the outgoing model. The suspension gets a softer set-up which feels plush and is ready to tackle all sorts of potholes that our roads throw up and the 5 glides over most surfaces very smoothly. The long wheelbase leads to the sedan bottoming out slightly on some of the nastier speed breakers but otherwise there is no such concern of discomfort. Whether you’re driving at slow of high speeds, the 5-Series remains nicely glued to the tarmac. The Dynamic Damper Control is super useful, you can set it to Comfort when your chauffeur is at the wheel and you can change it to Sport when you’re driving it and it immediately transforms the car.