When my BMW M5 left the factory in 2002, it was one of the best sports sedans ever built. To this day a clean, well-taken-care-of E39 M5 is still better than most sedans built since. My M5, showing just under 190,000 miles when I bought it, was far from a perfect example. Yet with one big upgrade, I got a lot of the E39 magic back.
When I purchased my M5 back in May, the most notable issue with the car was a vibration around 65 mph. At 60 the car was fine, and at 80 it was smooth, but everywhere in between sucked. Plus, when I pushed it in corners, the car had unpredictable breakaway and vague, unconfident steering feel. It was clear that the no-name tires were to blame. When Continental offered me a set of ExtremeContact Sport tires to review-the company's competitor to Michelin's venerable Pilot Sport 4S-it gave me the perfect opportunity to see just how much a simple set of tires can change a car.
Of course, shortly after those tires arrived, my M5's throwout bearing gave up, taking the clutch with it. Two weeks of downtime, thousands of dollars in repairs, and the creeping feeling that I was in over my head followed. But eventually my light-blue beauty was back in action and sitting on brand-new Continentals, size 245/40R-18 in the front and 275/35R-18 in the rear.
As soon as I pulled out of the shop I could feel the difference. Even at low speeds, the stiffer sidewall made the M5 feel sharper on turn-in. The ride felt marginally stiffer but far more controlled, restoring some of the sport-sedan magic that helped make the M5 a legend. Rolling onto the power, there was plenty of grip-a pretty clear indicator of how much tire technology has progressed since 2002, when my M5's 400 hp was considered extreme.
The improvement was even more notable in the rain. Continental has always focused a little more on wet-weather performance than its competitors. These ExtremeContact tires are massively confident in the rain-especially compared to the cheapo all-seasons they replaced. I never push it hard in the rain, but these tires are far more stable and assuring on wet highways than most summer performance tires I've tried.
The real reward comes in hard driving. The old tires gave very little feedback and even less warning when you were overdoing it. The safest strategy was caution: stay far from the limits or risk disaster. On the ExtremeContacts, the M5 was far more communicative. Even when it was brand-new, this car didn't offer amazing steering feel-it has recirculating ball steering, after all-but riding on quality rubber, more information came through the steering wheel.
More importantly, the design of the tire itself made the car more predictable, more friendly, and easier to push. A clever sidewall design provides massively increased stiffness over the last generation ExtremeContact, but barely decreases ride comfort. The result is a firm, linear response to steering inputs that ensures predictable handling. I've never driven an E39 M5 on Michelin Pilot Sport 4S tires, but I've sampled them on lots of other cars, and these Continentals certainly offer a lot of the same good traits.
Driven with intentional stupidity, it's still possible to slide my M5 on these new tires, but the sheer amount of grip requires a lot of power or steering lock. And since I just spent hundreds on my clutch and driveshaft, I 'm not going to risk doing that very often. But the knowledge that slides are controllable, recoverable, and easy to maintain makes the idea of pushing the car on the track far more interesting.
Which is really the point. A smart modification makes you want to use your car more. And now that my car feels more controlled, more sure-footed in the rain, more communicative, and far friendlier at the limit, it's clear that the ExtremeContact Sports are worth the price: $192.99 and $257.99 from Tire Rack charges for my M5's front and rear sizes, respectively.
My 20-year-old sport sedan still isn't exactly as good as it was the day it left the factory. But thanks to these new Continentals, it's a hell of a lot closer than it was.