Polestar 5 vs BMW M5

What's the difference?

It’s finally here.

The Polestar 5 electric grand tourer (GT) has officially launched in Australia six years after the original Precept concept was revealed.

Thankfully many of the concept’s design cues have carried over to the production model and it continues Polestar’s history of offering GT cars - its first was the limited-production Polestar 1 which was only sold in left-hand-drive markets.

Like all current Polestars, the Polestar 5 is all-electric and competes against the likes of the Porsche Taycan and Audi e-tron GT.

We’ve already driven the Polestar 5 overseas, but this is the first time we’re experiencing it on local soil. Read on to see how it fares.

Balancing luxury car comfort, hot hatch agility and supercar speed is no easy task, yet that is what made the six previous generations of BMW's M5 so iconic. 

In seventh-generation ‘G90’ guise, the M5 has another skeleton in the cupboard: the toughest emissions regulations that Europe, and now Australia, have ever seen.

A twin-turbo V8 was untenable and going battery electric was not an option. Plug-in hybrid was the only answer. For the new M5, BMW combined a revised 4.4-litre ‘S68’ bent eight with a punchy electric motor for 535kW and 1000Nm. 

Problem is, the G90 is widely acknowledged as one of the greatest BMW M cars of all time, especially in CS trim. And thanks to a circa-600kg weight hike to nearly 2500kg, the new M5's 0-100km/h claim is actually slower than the old 'F90' M5. 

Doesn’t exactly sound like a big leap forward, does it?

A drive through the Central West of NSW and around the iconic Mount Panorama racing circuit gave us answers to two questions. Does the M5 work on Australia roads, and does BMW M's latest super-sedan represent progress?