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M550dX: Do you know what this means?

BMW M5

If you know your BMW nomenclature then a car badged as an ‘M550dX’ will most likely make you stop in your tracks and ask, “Would they really do that?”

The ‘M’ means go fast, of course. In the good old days ‘550’ would have told you the model was a 5 Series powered by a 5.0 litre engine. Today, all it tells you is it will be a model close to the top of the 5 Series tree.

Now, here’s where it starts to get interesting: ‘d’ indicates the car is diesel powered and ‘X’ tells you that power is delivered to all four wheels.

So what are we left with? An all-wheel drive, diesel powered M5 in effect.

This is the hot tip as we near the Frankfurt Motor Show. At the very least we’ll be seeing the first of BMW’s tri-turbo madness when they bolt three turbochargers to a six clyinder diesel engine in time for the show.

The all-wheel drive M5 rumour has been around for a while now. But a diesel M5: would they really do that?

[Source: Autoblog]

6 replies on “M550dX: Do you know what this means?”

Liam, we had trouble diagnosing boost recirculation problems with my single turbo car. Imagine what can possibly go wrong with 3 turbos, all with separate recirculation systems!!

Actually this car is not as left field as it sounds. Diesels are incredibly popular in Europe, and have a good sports profile due to Le Mans etc. BMW already have 4wd M cars (X5m and X6M) and already have relatively high performance diesel engines like 330d and X540D

I currently have a 535d M sport in my garage. I can assure you that it is no bad thing! With the amount of torque from the new 5 litre tri-turbo, AWD may be the sensible solution.

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