A New Direction...

Today`s blog is going to be taken in "a new direction", so to speak. Today, I'll be writing a review of a car I test-drove earlier this Fall: The BMW 550i with the SMG transmission.

Now anyone's who's a BMW fan and a Canadian knows that this means I can only be talking about the M5. But I'm not, I swear.

In a string of coincidences, I was able to test drive a 2007 550i that had been recently imported from the US. Here, in Canada, only the lucky saps who could afford the current-generation of M5, could experience this amazing transmission. Phooey on them, I say.

As a fan of the 5-series, I am always on the lookout for a great car at a great price. I came across this ad for this car at what was about half-price of new but then I noticed this notation about it having the SMG transmission, (Sequential Manual Gearbox). Huh, said I, for I know that that transmission was not available for any car other than the M5 and even then, I'm sure they're just so rare in this northern clime.

So I went to see this car, having only read nightmarish reviews of this transmission. But when it was explained to me and I tested it, I could only wonder, "what are all those complaints about?" Was everyone wrong?

I can say with an unqualified: YES! They're all wrong! No matter who they are! Wrongo!! You see, I'm not a fan of stick-shifting. Living in the nation's capital, I can't stand thinking about having to work a trannie and a clutch in stop-and-go traffic. Thank God, Ottawa's geography is relatively flat. Back in my home town, if you went a half-kilometer without either disappearing below the horizon or climbing over it, you WEREN'T in my home town!

But I do love the Tiptronics or Manu-matics, as they can be known. You know, an automatic that can be shifted by paddles or flicking the shifter over to one side and 'rowing' back and forth between the gears. No jerking; no stalling; no screeching tires. And now I'm facing this transmission. Hmm, so I asked what the difference is with this transmission versus a standard Tiptronic.

Well, this car is still a manual, it won't shift without you, (there is a near-automatic mode that I'll address later). It has an electronic double-clutch that engages when the gas pedal is momentarily released. You shift up or down, the car doesn't 'know' what you're going to do. So, there is computer "support" but it does still leave the work to you without you having to worry about all the negative things listed about in regards to driving a stick-shift. So you can rev it all the way to the red line before shifting or simply shift it 'quietly' at 2500 rpm and be on your way.

The shifter simply moves forward or back, shift up; shift down; it's that simple.How brainless, so to speak! There's even a set of 'paddles', though I'd call them 'buttons' sitting above the 3 and 9 o'clock positions within the steering wheels' radius. There are very few systems like that that I'd trust as being pure. I can concede that marques such as Aston Martin; Ferrari; Lambo; etc, are going with paddle-shifting and some do it well and others, not so much.

So my test-drive was in pure manu-shift mode, using the shifter at all times. Now I know purists will shun me for this but to each their own. I can see that this system delivers more control and torque without a traditional clutch to worry about. I could start the car from still, in second gear and it did not spin the tires in the fashion that shows you don't know how to drive. Oh, I DID spin them but that was more about enjoying that 4.8 liter V8!

There`s a BMW 540i sitting in my garage and it makes do with a 4.4 V8 and only 5 forward gears. This new 550i, (I`ve never discovered the origin of the "i" in BMW's naming), has 6 forward gears and it responds IMMEDIATELY! The 7 year-old V8 in my garage is no slouch and it is astounding how BMW has worked to make their engines respond so quickly to throttle input. It's like, step on it and you're there before you left... and it made a great big noise on its way!

Now, I've driven the 545s and there was something 'soft' about them. Although it was the same engine as what's in my garage, it accelerated like it was out for a brisk walk. Not a slug, but not "HOLY &%$#" like the 2002 540i sitting downstairs. I can't begin to understand why. Perhaps BMW was more focused on its sheep-herding 3-series development that all it bothered to do when redesigning the 5-series was just to give it a face lift, inside and out. As you may have guessed, I'm not a 3-series fan. Around here, anyone who doesn't have a Porsche Boxster, has a 3-series BMW. I'm not putting down it's performance capacity. It's just that it's so common and so 'me-too' for a car the size of a Honda Civic at four times the price.

So, getting back to the 550 I was looking at. Stunning condition for a car that saw a New York winter and a Canadian one after that. Not a scratch on the body, equipped with Nav, 6-cd player, parking sensors, neck massagers and a stunning two-tone dark grey and caramel leather. It even had a 60-40 split rear seat, something it's grand-father sitting in my garage, doesn't have.

So here I am, off on down a country road, the owner describing how it works. "Just like an arcade version", he says. Ho-kaayy, I think to myself. So then, we switched places, I do all the mirror work and spend ten minutes figuring out what the 27 buttons on the side of the seat do. And now it's my turn.

So it's parked, I push the gear lever forward, step on the gas a bit and BLAMMO!!! We're gone! WO! That engine has awakened, returned to the behavior of the 5-series as I've always known it.

It was terribly easy to drive and master. Anyone who's played any racing game in an arcade would be able to master this trannie easily! Gas; step-off/shift; gas... step-off/shift. Couldn't be simpler. And the I was told it could be driven as an automatic, although that's secondary to the original design.

Now it's within this capacity that I'm sure most people have tried to use it and came away perturbed. You see, driving it in "automatic" is so much like driving it manually, it's nearly the very same procedure: gas;step-off/let-the-car-shift; gas. Depending on how aggressively you're driving, you would 'know' when the car's about to shift, let off the gas, it shifts, back on the gas again. Simple, simple, simple. But I believe that it's when people were driving it this way that THEY made the errors that would lead them to conclude that the trannie doesn't work.

You see, look at the procedure above and analyze the following: what would happen if you didn't let off the gas? Something like this, I would assume: Vrooooom; jerk; scree; vroom. Did you get that? I suspect that in this automatic mode, drivers weren't letting off the gas either in time or they just couldn't figure out the timing of when it would shift and so the result was very jerking driving.

And they blamed the car! I for one, loved it. It drove so intuitively, the shifts were fast and sharp and once I learned to time myself to the shifts, (which took all of less than two minutes!), it was a perfect ride. This transmission's shifting capacity for well-timed and surprisingly quick shifts, was fantastic.

I loved driving this car with this transmission! I can see why there are those who don't like it and I'm sure that I've "hit the nail on the head" with my supposition as to why others don't like it. If I could have done so, I would have bought this car. The body was perfect, the engine alive with incredible reaction times; the transmission made the drive so much more involved but not to the point of it becoming a chore. The interior's color combination and the equipment level was just as perfect.

So, my conclusion is simple: don't listen to me as a ruler to judge by. Don't listen to the press either. Learn from it, let any negative or positive commentary such as my own sway you. Try something yourself. Use what I and others have said as a guide to look directly into the issues that others complained or boasted about and decide for yourself.


Although I've always been a fan of the 5-series, I am always ready to say when BMW has 'missed the ball' on something. But not today. I would recommend that if you ever have a chance to buy or even just try one, go ahead do it. You'll see that BMW delivers on the promise.

What should have been a technical success for BMW turned into a bane of retort. But it's not bad engineering or bad products; it's bad drivers!

I salute BMW for taking a new direction