BMW's Best Kept Secret - Why The F13 M6 is a Performance BARGAIN

foreign [Music] ladies gentlemen and everybody else today I am putting one of my own theories to the test just a few days ago I did another video on the first generation well E63 E64 you know the one I mean 6 series 650i in which I said that this was still the ultimate bargain BMW and one of the best cars they ever made but it may be that today I have to backtrack a little bit because I have been presented with new evidence in the form of this the f-13 generation I the one after M6 this is a car that does a lot right but is it enough let's find out [Music] the Third Generation 6 series landed in 2011 with this the m6 appearing in 2012 and what I'm driving today is an example of an early model like its predecessor this 6 series is mechanically very closely related to the 5 series of the day then the F10 generation however the F10 itself was already a dramatically different car to that which had come before the E60 that if you're trying to remember is the at the time generally unloved bangle shape 5 series which also gave us the mighty V10 M5 the major change that occurred was the fact that the then new 5 series shared a lot in common with the 7 Series and so though the new M5 and M6 had quite a bit more power and torque than their naturally aspirated predecessors that also put on quite a bit of weight in some cases like for the m6 near 200 kilos and I've always thought that was a little bit of a shame because to me this really was the beginning of BMW going away from their very much engineering and r d focused routes you see back in the 1990s this was a firm that took out whole two-page spreads in magazines just to tell you that the new 5 series The E39 now had an aluminum suspension and all the reasons why this made it better I can't think many manufacturers would attempt that today in any case the numbers here are still impressive power comes courtesy of a 4.4 liter twin turbocharged S63 engine the world's first to have a hot V configuration so the turbos in the middle of the two Banks to give it improved response power was up from the old v10s 500 to 550 and torque Rose dramatically from about 384 pound foot to again around 500 in metric that's 680 newton meters the gearbox retained seven speeds but unlike the old generally unloved SMG unit this was a new DCT twin clutch transmission so it was greatly improved both in automatic and manual mode I have driven the F10 M5 which is again very similar to this and I must say I found it somewhat underwhelming but even before I got behind the wheel of the six it was already doing a lot right first off I think this is a very very good looking car where the old six is always a slightly awkward duck it works from some angles but not from others this generally is much much better Sleek elegant and I think rather handsome particularly compared with the awful Gump that BMW are making today as before the car came in both Coupe which is this the f-13 convertible the F12 and new for this generation Grand Coupe which was essentially a four-door sort of slightly stretched out version of this which always did confuse me because I thought the whole point of the six series was it was the two-door version of a 5 series much like the four series it's a two-door version of a three series that they then made a four-door version of in any case they're all very well equipped cars and the m6 of course the best of all you have an amazing array of standard features including heads-up display soft closed doors and some wondrous materials in here you've got leather everywhere I believe it is the Merino type and it's a contrast of dark and light much like the 650 that I drove a week ago I have to say having the little bit of extra leather here on the door and the dash just lifts this car to a whole nother level it's fabulous the wheel is nice in the hand and unlike modern BMW items though it's a little bit squidgy it's not horrendous you've got paddles for the gearbox and you can also operate it down here using a lever that looks identical to that you'd get in the old E90 e92 M3 there are settings to adjust the driving modes one for the engine one for the suspension and one for the steering you also have just below the lever a button for the gearbox modes too however unlike the the old M5 and M3 there aren't quite so many just three here to be honest it never needed as many as it had these seats are absolutely gorgeous really comfortable and they hug you quite nicely too the rear is still a little on the cramped side I think you could get an adult or maybe two in there but um if you really do want to put people in the back of this on a frequent basis that I think is what the grand Coupe is for in any case the boot is very generous again as per the old six series and that makes this a real proper grand tourer should you wish it the dash is a nice combination of analog and digital gives you all the information that you need in a very clear concise and easy to read fashion you've got on the wheel M1 and M2 buttons that alter various different things the M1 here has been set essentially to do nothing it leaves everything in its most comfy and lazy settings but what you do get is a little rev counter on the screen up here speaking of which the red line You'll Find at 7200 RPM and curiously despite it being a twin turbocharged V8 torque actually comes in surprisingly high with the peak being at over 4 4000 RPM anyway you don't really want to hear about iDrive and how comfortable it is and all that jazz do you you want to know how it goes down the road so let's drop a few gears and find out foreign [Applause] I'm sure you've also noted by now that the car makes a slightly unusual noise this is entirely standard exhaust included and one Quirk of these generation of cars anything with the S63 engine is that it had an exhaust manifold that kind of Christian crust about the place I think it may have been an equal length job but don't quote me on that the net result is that it doesn't really sound like a classic cross-plane crank V8 nor does it sound entirely like a flat plane one either instead it's a weird hybrid of the two it's got shades of McLaren about it and the more I listen to it the more I do kinda like it although much like James I would be very tempted by the official BMW M performance exhaust for this car if it weren't for the fact it's apparently 8 000 quid made by acrapovic though which I'm sure makes it all fine when I drove that F10 M5 I have to say I found myself being somewhat underwhelmed with the performance this is not the same maybe it's possible that that car just wasn't working quite right but one thing I do have to say about the way this engine behaves is that you really do need to rev it out to get the best from it many modern turbocharged engines by the time you've got to about 5000 RPM they're done this one feels like it's only really coming on song at about four the steering here is hydraulic and it has a little bit more feel than you might expect and grip is certainly not an issue but it's not massively fearsome in that traditional BMW fashion and despite the fact I am in Comfort mode for the Adaptive dampers it is quite a harsh riding thing sits on 20-inch wheels behind which you'll find some nice big breaks you could have had Ceramics if you option them or if you went I think for the competition Pack cars those also got you an overall even stiffer set up and a little bit more power too but honestly I don't think this car needs a stiffer suspension it's absolutely fine as it is if anything a little bit too firm for my liking bearing in mind this is comfort the steering I've now got in sport mode and I think it might have added a touch of feel but it's more likely it's just added a touch of weight Sport Plus mode meanwhile just sets the thing in treacle and is generally useless the gearbox I've got in its maximum attack mode and I have to say that as a star of the show it's doing a very very good job in auto mode it's a lovely nice smooth decent thing and not quite as good as a torque converter Auto but miles better than the old SMG right three-point turn Hill start torture test and this is quite a big car near five meters long and one of the issues with these big big wheelbase which means that certain things are a little bit daunting like this because you're always kind of worried you're going to beat you multi-story carbox I'm told it does not like and for down again I suppose [Applause] I have to say maybe this is a result of it being slightly stiffer setup than I would like it does change direction very keenly this thing when you consider it is a two ton car so equivalent really to my old Quattroporte say it is really really surprisingly agile it never feels like it's quite working with the road some other cars even bigger ones you get a certain amount of pace on and all of a sudden that harshness goes away here it doesn't feel like that really ever wants to happen you do also get the sensation of being impossibly low slung in this car I mean it really is sort of sports car low almost very different driving position to say an M3 quite like it it does however make visibility a little bit interesting forward and to the side is okay but that Bonnet is massive and you have absolutely zero concept of where it is likewise the back of the car it's just as well that it's got front rear parking sensors and the obligatory camera as well to help you position it because it's not small this oh [Music] [Applause] the owner James lovely name that is just 22 and you may be thinking that this is a wildly inappropriate car for a 22 year old to have and in some ways you'd be absolutely right however it is nowhere near the Daft purchase that you may be thinking I'm sure a few of you have already assumed that he's from a very wealthy family not the case at all he works in a restaurant earning you know working in a restaurant money and no it's not a restaurant that his family owns but you can now get one of these for just over 20 000 pounds and it is just over 20 000 quid that he paid for this car from a BMW main dealer yes it's got 79 000 miles on it but who cares when it comes with a one-year BMW approved used warranty that means that if anything does go wrong with the car and these weren't impervious to issues including with the engine it's covered which is nice the six areas in general is always a car I've had quite an affinity for and to me it's always been a bit of a logical choice if you don't need proper back seats the six is pretty much as much car as you're going to get for the money from essentially any manufacturer from where I'm sitting though it's certainly not a perfect car and yes I appreciate they have their faults I think James has realized the exact same thing that I did about 10 years ago which is that the six Series in essentially any guys it would appear offers Sensational value for money perhaps it's a uniquely British thing I don't know maybe it's the same in other parts of the world if you are watching from abroad please hop into the comments and tell me but here the model number of BMW doesn't really seem to affect the price that you pay case in point I had a 130i very nice one a few years back in fact it's the only car I've ever owned twice and um had that got the same mileage on it as the seven series that I have which was the same age they would have both been worth about the same money despite the fact that one of them would have been a thirty thousand pound car when you and one of them would have been a hundred thousand pound car when new it really does seem to work like that for the same money you could have a one series of the same year a three series a five series a six series or a seven series however the thing with the seven series is that it's not particularly sporty I'm sure even the m760li isn't that sporty then I suppose it's not really a full m car and the 7 Series is notorious for being expensive to keep going that's just the lot of any Top Flight luxury Saloon the sixth series then is just one step back but still feels more special than the five but in practice shouldn't be any more expensive to run and of course today one of these isn't going to cost you really that much more than a 5 series but when new it did the m6 this shape M6 was over 90 000 pounds over a hundred grand for some of the later higher specification models and to be able to pick that up now a decade later for 20 grand that's incredible so why then is that well I've got a couple of theories one of which is the fact that most British people are just afraid of buying a bigger more expensive car for fear of the running costs and unfortunately because these then depreciate heavily as a result of that they then get cheap quickly and that means that people don't want to spend the money on them that they sometimes require to keep going therefore they get into really bad condition relatively quickly and do wind up costing people on occasion and fathomable sums of money my 7 Series case and Boyne bought the car for 10 grand spent five grand on it sold it for five grand worst decision ever that car but the thing is had that car been maintained properly had everyone who owned it spent the money when it was required it wouldn't have been anywhere near as bad however it's a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy in recent years in particular we have become averse to cars which we think won't be very economical although even this is actually not that not bad on a run James reckons he can get about 28 to the gallon out of it when you're having fun of course it's not going to be that good but 28 is still darn impressive and to be honest that means there's an average it's probably drinking the same as an old E46 or E90 M3 even better his insurance is shockingly cheap you would just assume I think rightly so that for any 22 year old looking at a 550 horsepower turbocharged M car it would be thousands and thousands of pounds but actually for the year it was 1400 quid and it's here that it can also get into the real reason I think these the second generation six Series in particular simply failed to do all that well that is because when these cars were out the four series landed and simply put the minute the four series landed you basically couldn't give a six series away I remember these being sold not necessarily M6 sixes but regular ones with a 40 000 pound discount they were essentially discounting them to the same price as a 4 Series just to try and encourage people to buy them it was an absolute Slaughter and just to me totally unjustified this is so much more car than a 4 Series but maybe it's for that reason I mean in Britain a four series is already fairly big and I suppose it was a little bit sexier a little bit more desirable this is perhaps a bit too sensible and maybe it's because of the instant success of the 4 Series and the M4 particularly with the younger crowd that when James asked for a quote on an M4 he was told it was going to be eight and a half Grand insurance companies are actually fairly simple beasties I suspect the reason for the massive difference in quotes is that um loads of young people have binned m4s but a very very few if any have been in M6 yeah this pulls this thing it does actually have talk low down as well as it's just evidence but um it is an example of a car that's extraordinarily good at masking its speed how does it get on through here very well very well indeed and he does say that is his biggest concern with it that um he's not worried about crashing it but getting caught doing silly speed is a big problem I suppose we can't really blame the car for that too much all it means is that it's done its job very very well but um it is something to be wary of and I suppose to many the six Series in the m6 I caught in this kind of no man's land between the vastly sportier 911 and the far more prestigious Aston Martin and I suppose if you're just interested in the best value proposition well a Jaguar XKR a 16 17 18 Grand is going to give you similar Thrills to this it's a lighter car it's going to be just as fast if not faster in the real world does ride quite a bit better too and it's a Jag which is a bit cooler than a BMW I think however if you're willing to take the plunge with us and I think today they're probably a relatively safe bet their weaknesses are known and you can check for many of the issues look for buyers guys if you want to know more about these but generally speaking other than a couple of slightly heart-stopping engineer shoes and the typical rampant BMW oil consumption they seem to be quite solid provided you can cope with the ride that is a bit too firm the steering that's not best in class but actually better than you would expect this is a fantastic car and is perilously close perilously I say to dethroning the ld63 and E64 650i as my favorite used BMW if only it were a touch more refined in terms of its damping which I'm sure probably the regular 6 series is it would have my heart it might do anyway this is a very very cool car anyway I want to say huge thank you to James for bringing it out and as ever to you for watching don't forget to hit the like button comment down below and subscribe if you haven't already I'll see you for the next one bye-bye hmm [Music] thank you [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Channel: JayEmm on Cars

Views: 205,787

Keywords: Diary, VLOG, Car, Sound, Test, video, Review, Comparison, JayEmm on Cars

Id: g-yxtQaASeo

Length: 20min 30sec (1230 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 03 2023