BMW 5 Series - Boot space, comfort & practicality

The BMW 5 Series is available as a sizeable five-seat, four-door saloon car, and a more practical five-door estate called the 5 Series Touring, which should cope with a family's demands without resorting to an inefficient SUV. 

With its generous exterior dimensions, the 5 Series is a big car inside, with plenty of space for five. The front seats are supremely comfortable and include electric lumbar adjustment as standard. Adding the pricey Comfort Plus pack gives you full electric adjustment to the front seats, a seat ventilation system, memory settings, and a heated steering wheel.

The rest of the interior is well thought out, with a deep cubby under the central armrest, which we found useful for hiding valuables. The 5 Series has a wireless charging pad just beneath the centre console, which is a more convenient way of keeping your smartphone topped up because the USB-C ports are awkwardly positioned just ahead of the cup holders. The door bins are wide and deep, so there’s space for a bulky water bottle to be safely stowed.

Unlike its predecessor, the G60’s platform used by the latest 5 Series can accommodate the battery pack of the plug-in hybrid model without impacting passenger space, which isn’t always the case with rivals such as the Mercedes E-Class.

Dimensions and size

At 5,060mm in length, 1,900mm in width, and 1,515mm in height, the latest BMW 5 Series is bigger in all directions than the Mercedes E-Class. Given how long it is, it seems just as well that front and rear parking sensors are included as standard.

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Seats, leg room, head room & passenger space

Rear seat space is so accommodating that you might wonder why people would bother with the larger BMW 7 Series, plus the bench is soft and forgiving, which means it feels just as luxurious in the back as it does up front. The cabin is wide and there’s enough head room to give those in the back plenty of space to stretch out.

You’ll find two ISOFIX child seat mounting points are provided on the rear bench's outer positions, and are easy to find behind some folding plastic clips.

Boot space

The vast 520-litre load area in the BMW 5 Series is the same whether you go for the regular petrol or plug-in hybrid versions, although you will have to find space for the charging cables because the 5 Series doesn’t have a handy storage area for them. If you need to carry longer items, then the rear-seat backs can drop down in a flexible 40/20/40 split to expand that volume into the cabin, although the saloon bodystyle makes it tricky to load really bulky items, but then that particular problem will be solved with the upcoming Touring version.

You will find an extra 20 litres of luggage capacity in the petrol and diesel versions of the Mercedes E-Class. However, if you opt for the plug-in hybrid version of the E-Class, its boot shrinks dramatically to 370 litres, which is smaller than what you’ll find in the Skoda Fabia supermini.