BMW 520i Touring M Sport Pro

Report 1: The black sheep?

As we get the first few hundred miles clocked on 'our' BMW 520i Touring, we're contemplating its uniqueness in the range.

Date: 5 January 2026 | Current mileage: 689 | Claimed economy: 46.3mpg | Actual economy: 39.9mpg

What strange times we live in. It used to be possible to spec a BMW 5 Series Touring with myriad diesel engines, from Billy basic four-cylinder fuel economy heroes to smooth, six-cylinder torque factories with multiple turbochargers. Even one with four turbos, for a little while. 

Fast forward to today and there isn't a single diesel engine available in the UK BMW 5 Series range, which is predominantly made up of plug-in hybrid petrols and full EVs if you're including the BMW i5 line-up. If you don't want a PHEV or an EV, your only option is a 520i. Once the runt of the litter, the 520i Touring I'm living with for the next four months is looking more like the black sheep. If you'll excuse the use of two animal-based analogies in one sentence. 

It does still have a tiny bit of electrical assistance, being a mild-hybrid with a 48-volt battery and a small electric motor, but regardless, this is still the most traditional BMW 5 Series you can buy. It's the least powerful by some measure, but it provides perfectly reasonable performance. The 2.0-litre four-cylinder engine puts out 190PS and 310Nm of torque, making for 0-62mph in 7.8 seconds and a top speed of 138mph. 

Granted, there aren't exactly fireworks when you put your foot down, but the engine is smooth and refined for a four-cylinder unit, not that you hear all that much of it, such is the 5er's abundant soundproofing. Despite the relatively modest output, you never feel like you have to thrash the thing to get up to the national speed limit. 

What I have been left yearning for, though, is a bit more economy. Yes, diesel has fallen out of favour, but a torquey, economical diesel engine feels like it makes a lot of sense in a 5 Series wagon. As it stands, the best I've seen from the car on a single journey is about 44mpg, while on a long motorway/dual-carriageway cruise, it settles to about 42mph. The average so far is hovering around 40mpg, helped by the majority of my time with the car thus far involving those aforementioned motorway jaunts. 

Not bad figures by any means, but a little way off the 46.3mpg official WLTP figure, and some distance from the 50-60mpg we reckon you'd be able to get with the 520d, if it were actually sold in the UK. Yes, it does still exist elsewhere, as does a six-cylinder 540d, but we're denied both in British BMW dealerships. 

Anyway, that's more than enough moaning about a car we don't get. We should focus more on the 5 Series we can drive. And there's plenty to like. It doesn't feel quite as sharp or involving as 5ers of old, but what will matter to far more drivers is just how comfortable it is, with a silky smooth ride that deftly irons out imperfections in the road surface.

This is far from a given these days, particularly when it comes to SUVs that seem to have been made firm to compensate for lean-prone tall suspension setups. And it's SUVs that are largely responsible for cars like the 5 Series Touring being an endangered species. 

It seems a shame that the explosion in SUV popularity has left the estate car market on life support, because these cars still make a great deal of sense for families. Along with the comfort benefits already mentioned, there's the obvious practicality boon, and the 5er Touring does particularly well in this regard, offering 570 litres of space with the rear seats in place.

It's not just about the raw numbers, either – the load space is nicely boxy, without any pesky ingress from the rear suspension struts. Dropping the rear seats is easy thanks to a pair of remote levers near the wide-opening tailgate, and doing so opens up 1700 litres of space.

Within days of taking delivery of the car, it was inevitably pressed into duty on a run to the local tip, and passed this key estate car test with flying colours. You'll just need to be wary about loading particularly tall items – as with a lot of modern wagons, a sloping roofline does limit the boot height somewhat. 

It came into its own on the Christmas getaway, making light work of a 400-mile-plus round trip while three-up and loaded up with various clobber, including my e-mountain bike (I did have to partly drop the rear bench to fit the latter in). Speaking of awkward luggage, it can also accommodate an eight-foot surfboard, albeit with some careful angling and slight ingress into the front part of the cabin. 

As for niggles, the only blot on the 520i's report card has been smartphone connectivity. Three times now, the car has failed to connect to my Android device, flashing up a warning about it every few minutes. This can only be cleared by deleting the phone and re-adding it, which can take a few attempts. I also tried connecting my other half's Android device, which wouldn't work with it at all initially, and once it did, only the Bluetooth function worked, not Android Auto. 

I'll be keeping an eye on things to see if there are further issues. Should that be the case, I can take solace in the assumption that this is the sort of issue that might be sorted at some stage via an over-the-air software update. In any case, there's so far very little else to criticise the 5 Series Touring for. Yet more evidence that estate cars are the best.