BMW 520i Touring long-term test: living with the 5 Series petrol estate

• Report 1: The black sheep?
• Report 2: Is this what progress looks like?
• Report 3: Where are the diesels?

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. 

Report 2: Is this what progress looks like?

A visit to see my F10 5 Series-owning brother gave me the chance to see what he thinks of the current version of his car.

Date: 28 January 2026 | Current mileage: 1690 miles | Claimed economy: 46.3mpg | Actual economy: 39mpg

“No split tailgate? Sacrilege!” was one of my brother Andy’s early reactions to seeing my 520i Touring long-term test car for the first time, not long after asking why the ‘20i’ was smaller than the ‘5’ on the badge, as per BMW’s new-look model designations. I couldn't really provide him with a satisfactory answer on that front, because I'm not sure I really see the point. 

Badging aside, I was particularly interested in his take on the car, as an owner of the now two-generation-old F10 5 Series Touring, and before that an E39 5er Wagon – a V8-powered 540i, no less. Well, he still has the latter, rotting away at the end of his driveway, much to the chagrin of his wife, Laura. He’ll get rid of it at some point, I’m assured…

But anyway, his 535d provides an interesting point of comparison. A lot has changed since the F10 bowed out in 2017, not least that lack of split tailgate. And yet, the family connection is still clear, with the retention of BMW’s classic kidney grille helping massively in that regard, even if they’re a lot bigger here, and backlit.

In terms of looks, mind you, Andy doesn’t reckon it’s an improvement over the F10, nor the 5 Series between his and this one. “I like the back, but not keen on the front. It looks too bulbous – I much prefer the G30 5 Series [the generation between his and the current car].” He did, at least, appreciate the neat little detail which is the ‘5’ stamped onto the shell on the B-pillar.

Stepping inside, there are jokes of “I’m not sure the screens are big enough,” with the 12.3-inch digital instrument cluster, 14.9-inch infotainment combination giving a whole lot more screen real estate than what he’s used to with his F10, which still uses physical dials and has a far smaller central screen. He describes the dash design as ‘chunky’, in a good way, but finds the portion of the ‘interaction bar’ under the infotainment screen with the front/rear windscreen de-mister controls and the hazard light warning to be cheap-looking.

Although he’s open to the idea of this generation of 5 Series, once they’ve depreciated sufficiently, he’s not keen on the idea of a 520i amidst the lack of an equivalent diesel to his 535d. “It seems too compromised – not amazing on fuel, not particularly quick. I’d get a plug-in version.”

It'll be a while before he needs to worry about that, though. And in any case, he has more pressing concerns. Like finally getting rid of that poor E39.

Report 3: Where are the diesels?

The more time we spend with 'our' 520i Touring, the more time we ponder whether it'd be better with a different engine. And one that you can't have...

Date: 19 February 2026 | Current mileage: 2710 | Claimed economy: 46.3mpg | Actual economy: 40mpg

For a long time, the top-selling BMW 5-Series was the 520d. We're talking in the past tense, because it isn't anymore. And that's nothing to do with the general drop in demand for diesel-powered vehicles – it's because you can't buy one in the UK. 

Despite the 520d remaining the volume seller in the 5 Series up until the discontinuation of the seventh-generation version (that's the G31, if you're into geeky model codes) in 2023, there's no such model to choose from in the current 5er UK line-up. 

That's not because BMW doesn't make one at all – elsewhere in Europe, it's alive and kicking. There's also a six-cylinder 540d, should you want a bit more poke. But in the UK, there's no such luck. Diesel models have been thinned out across the board in the UK BMW configurator, with low demand cited as the reason, but it's a curious move to ditch the 520d when it was actually one of the popular ones.

So, in the absence of a diesel, what else can you choose if you don't fancy a 520i, or an all-electric i5 Touring? Well, there’s the 530e xDrive, which packages the same four-cylinder engine as the 520i with a massive 19.4kWh (useable) battery pack and a powerful electric motor to bump the power from 190PS to 299PS. Or there’s the 550e xDrive, which pairs the same electric gubbins with a 3.0-litre six-cylinder engine for nearly 500PS. That’s a similar amount of power to the old V10-powered ‘E60’ M5, for Pete’s sake.

The problem is, each of those, especially the 550e, is very heavy. And while you can save a lot of money on fuel if you can charge at home and drive in a manner that makes the most of their electric-only ranges, the fuel economy won’t be great if you’re ever running on an empty battery. On long-distance jaunts, for example – the sort of thing the old diesel versions of the 5 Series Touring were great at.

A badge you won't see on any UK-bound 5 Series

In our 520i, though, 40mpg is the best you can realistically hope for, even on a gentle motorway cruise. Overall, we've hovered around 39mpg in our time with a 520i Touring so far. That's not terrible, but some way off the 46.3mpg WLTP Combined figure, and not anywhere near the 60mpg+ we'd expect to get from a 520d.

Given that the 520d does still exist elsewhere, we can only hold out hope that BMW reverses its decision and makes a right-hand drive version after all. Don't hold your breath, though

In any case, other than the underwhelming but not disastrous fuel economy, there's really very little to moan about. The 520i Touring has blended into everyday life brilliantly, and it's always a joy to go back to it after spending time with something else. And usually, the BMW feels nicer by comparison.