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