Congratulations, you’ve made it to another Friday, and what better reward than a quick dive into The Carchive to see what sort of old papery nonsense we can dredge up from my dark and muddy caves of information.

Actually, today’s brochure has become damp at some point which just adds to the delicious mustiness. Poor a (small) glass of Liebfraumilch and cut a slice of Black Forest gateau, welcome to Bavaria.

“The New BMW 5 Series- a classic BMW”

Not really for them to say, to be honest, although they were probably right.

This extremely wordy publication is a pre-launch brochure for the middle Bimmer of 1981. Being apparently a direct translation from German to English there’s little in the way of light-heartedness or shameless promotional BS anywhere inside, just lots and lots of information and hundreds of mentions of efficiency, strength, innovation, safety, functionality and lederhosen.

“The way a new car catches the eye naturally depends on individual  taste.”

The basic design of Claus Luthe’s E28 owed much to Marcello Gandini’s original and seminal E12 5-Series of 1972. It was similar in basic outline but in fact very few components were interchangeable, though the doors certainly were. The idea wasn’t to reinvent the car, rather to bring it up to, or beyond, date.

It ended up as one of the most iconically styled of all the BMWs, not least because of that radically swept-forward front grille, similar to that of the E24 six-series but with different headlamp treatment. Overall it was a superbly well balanced and proportionally correct car, and sat particularly well on the optional TRX bottletop alloy wheels which would go on to infuriate compatible-tyre-starved owners during later years.

Incidentally, the 5-Series is my favourite size of BMW, combining much of the agility and raw driver appeal of the smaller cars, with shades of the sumptiousness of the VIP 7-series. It also introduced the world to the phenomenon that is the M5, which we’ll save for another day.

“With the New BMW 5 series, there is above all a pleasant and tasteful atmosphere typical of all the models in the BMW range”

Inside the car, not only were things extremely restful and easy on the eye, but there was a wealth of new and scintilatingly exciting technological features. Firstly, the ventilation system was thermostatically controlled; adjusting the heat-blend according to measurements taken by a temperature sensor in the footwell. Of course, in America you’d have A/C across the range as well, but the calibrated heating stuff was exciting enough on its own for us.

Also mind-bendingly thrilling was the introduction of the Service Interval Indicator, which went on to become a core BMW premise. A series of green and amber LEDs would light up in sequence when you started the car, to give you a visual reminder of how long you have until a service is due, then one day you’d wake up to RED LEDs and know that it’s time to empty all your savings out again. It all worked based on the car reading the driving characteristics of whatever lunatic spent time behind the wheel, and the service interval would vary depending on how tortured an existence the car suffered. Seeing how quickly you could extinguish the greens was also a fun built-in game, along with, where fitted, the fuel computer where achieving a single-figure MPG average was a feat to aim towards.

“..a new model of BMW will inevitably be of immense interest to all discerning motorists”

Well, they used to be. I’m just getting a bit bored with the endless permutations and the infinite number of sizes of SUVs they offer which are aggressively pitched at customers on deceptively unaffordable finance rates that they really shouldn’t be getting themselves into. And for an extra £49 a week you can have the Sport Pack, with bigger, noisier, firmer tyres and bone-joggling rigid springs. Sir.

A new 5-Series, though, is usually an interesting occurrence. Just sitting here, contemplating fives as one does from time to time, I can visualise the current F10 5er in a vague, blurry, pixelated beige form, but struggle to bring much fine detail to the forefront of my cerebral cortex. The E60 is far clearer in my mind, with its polarising Chris Bangle fallen-from-the-ugly-tree-and-then-thrown-down-the-stairs styling. But the almost-plain-and-dull-yet-somehow-not E39, to me, stands as the definitive 5-series and the one that really established the blueprint for what a really good upper-middle sized car should be. 

Actually, let’s have a show of hands. If you have an opinion on the matter; which has been your favourite 5- Series?

(Disclaimer: All images are of original manufacturer publicity materials photographed by me. Copyright remains property of BMW. What do you think of my new guest bedroom carpet? It’s not really that colour, blame incandescent lighting and the wrong white balance settings)