RWD Confirmed for Next Generation F90 M5, says Van Meel

Coming as a surprise today is M division’s CEO Frank van Meel’s statement that the next generation F90 BMW M5 cars will remain on rear wheel drive platforms. This news is just in and it goes against the past interviews where hints were being told about possibly going for AWD and scrapping the RWD. There were also testing footage of an AWD M5 so they might have changed their minds.

In an interview with Autocar, Frank van Meel said that the rear-wheel drive platform would always remain the default configuration for M cars. Eventually, there will be AWDs but not yet for this generation. Thus, Van Meel confirmed that the next-generation M5 will stick with RWD. It will also not have majority of autonomous technology that the new 5 Series takes from the 7 Series.

While traction control, stability control, and torque vectoring technology have already improved significantly over the years, it’s still not enough to put more than 600 horsepower to the ground safely and reliably. Every generation after the other, M cars are becoming even more powerful. Naturally, the progression is to evolve towards AWD and not just limit it to RWD. Sending power to all four wheels has its advantages but not very popular for M fans.

With BMW’s M cars getting so powerful, van Meel admits that it’s becoming hard to sell them without the AWD option, especially in markets like Canada and Switzerland. BMW M’s SUVs like the X5 M already use all-wheel drive, but this has not yet happened for the M’s sedans – at least for now. This is good news for enthusiasts. We get to have at least one more M5 RWD before the AWD one happens.