Oh, hey, look! It's a G22-series BMW M440i! Hey, that's a pretty slick-looking ride from the side.
Let's walk around to the front of the car and see what's shakin' up there...
YIKES! It looks, to steal a line from my friend TC, like a Mustang had sex with a naked mole rat. That, or some sort of angry cyborg attack beaver. That snout is going to take some getting used to, not gonna lie. I realize that, thanks to Audi and Lexus, great gaping maws of grille up front are the style of the time (the latest iteration of the Genesis sedans look like they might accidentally inhale a Smart or Scion iQ) but BMW's traditional split grille does the look no favors aesthetically.
I get that all the new BMW's got to be rolled over to some variation of the giant beaver-toothed snout. It's the marque's new design language and will be with us for the next 5-8 model years in some variation or another. But Mercedes finally gave up on even the faintest hint of a faux radiator shell decades ago and Lincoln Continentals lost the vestigial fake spare tire hump about the time they lost rear wheel drive, yet BMW is going to find a way to keep the now meaningless kidney blobs on the front end from now 'til doomsday.
I'd say I was never going to get used to it, but I also have to acknowledge that I used to say that about the Bangle era and now, with the right wheels, the E60 5-series is among my favorite Bimmers.
At least the numbers on this thing are solid. The 382hp turbocharged and intercooled 3.0L inline six gets a little nudge from the 48v mild hybrid motor to push the car to sixty in 3.8 seconds according to Car and Driver, and blitzes the quarter in 12.3 at 112mph. Still, between the AWD and the hybrid gear it weighs about a load of groceries short of two tons, which feels like a lot for the successor of the 2002ti.
This one was photographed using a Fujifilm X-T2 and XF 16-80mm f/4 R OIS WR zoom lens in April of 2021.
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