BMW M5 (E39)
Why 7.0: The super-saloon benchmark, manual-only, still doing school runs a quarter-century later. Values turned years ago but owners keep driving — the anti-R34.
Layout
Natural habitat
Ride comfort
Sound
The S62's individual throttle bodies produce an induction hiss that builds into a hard V8 wail past 5,000, out through quad pipes with nothing muffling the top end. It is civil and quiet below that, which is what keeps it out of exotic territory.
8-cylinder · naturally aspirated · 7,000 rpm redline · rated 8.1 / 10 for engine sound
Market value
Median asking price, good condition · €35k (2005) → €69k (2026), trending up · illustrative data
Child seats · ISOFIX
Outer rear seats only, and only from about September 2001 (MY2002) onward — a no-cost factory option, not standard, and not retrofittable since the anchors are welded into the body.
BMW never fitted a front-passenger ISOFIX point on the E39, and the passenger airbag has no easy deactivation either — consistent with front child-seat use never being intended.
Most of the M5's 1998–2003 production run predates the option — check the build date, not just the badge.
e39-forum.de owner thread ("ISOFIX bei der Limo") + bmw-syndikat.de E39 forum + motor-talk.de (owner-community sourced, not manufacturer documentation)
The long version
This spent the mid-2000s to mid-2010s as a genuinely cheap used car, values nearly halved by 2012, and that trough is exactly what built the ownership culture that has kept it alive: people bought it because it was an affordable manual super-saloon, not because it was an appreciating asset, and plenty of that generation of owner never sold. Values have more than tripled off that bottom since, but the driving habits did not reset when the market did. No badges attach because it does not need one to make its point, a fast, practical, three-pedal BMW still doing exactly what it was bought to do, decades on.