[Blue Sky]

Had a lackluster M60 20 minute test drive, mainly freeway. Sadly there were suddenly cars on the freeway so speed was slower than on the trip to the dealership and with little cornering opportunity. Going back for second drive next week, am allotted 30 minutes with SA as no i5 loaners/demos available for longer drives and the usual business with the dealership rationing time/miles on cars they want to sell.

Problem is that there’s little if any curvy road reachable from the local dealerships within a 30 minute drive. In any case, I was not able to spend any time configuring sport mode or even look at anything in iDrive and some aspects were kind of not optimal.

I think regen braking was on auto, as braking performance in “D” (I didn’t use “B” at all) was inconsistent and sometimes alarming. Part I think is that maybe the regen setting and also partly I’m not used to i5’s brake pedal operation (I think maybe it is travel dependent, instead of trying to feel pressure dependent like on a Taycan).

Would like input as to what to configure quickly at the start of the next drive so I can try to demo the car’s dynamic feel for sporty driving. Comfort mode driving seemed fine. Steering feel was a little too loose for my taste in comfort but sharpened up immediately when I hit the sport mode, suspension firmed up too, back seat passengers report freeway bumps weren’t nice any more, but there was not real cornering opportunity to test the benefits.

Other impressions were that the turn signal stalk didn’t feel nice like in E60 and up, and car had a plasticy smell which could have been plastics or maybe was Burgandy veganza upholstery. Am wondering if Merino is required to avoid this. Also not sure the configurator is correct because burgandy veganza should have triggered the sport seats, and these weren’t sport seats, thus unclear if only M black veganza option truly triggers sport seats. No opportunity to try sport seats, as I don’t think any cars in inventory have them. The seats on the M60 didn’t seem to have the backrest top half adjustment which I believe is supposed to be part of the comfort seats. Only 2024 in stock, so maybe the seat optioning has changed. SA doesn’t know anything about this.