• Seats five in comfort and space
• Boot is smaller than the E-Class
• Hybrid version loses 120 litres of boot space

The 5 Series has a low, sporty seating position as well as plenty of room inside for up to five passengers.

Headroom is generous and it feels spacious and airy front and rear. As with most executive saloons, the middle rear passenger doesn’t get quite such a good deal with a large transmission tunnel being where their feet should be.

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Boot space and storage

The boot is 530 litres in capacity – which is 10-litres shy of the Mercedes E-Class‘s but you shouldn’t need to pack too sensibly to fit in everyone’s bags on a holiday.

It’s a different story for the plug-in hybrid versions. The batteries are stashed under the rear seats, where the petrol tank usually goes, and this has been moved backwards where it eats into bootspace.

As such you get 410 litres of capacity to load luggage into, but it does mean the boot floor sits flush against the lip, making it easier to pack heavy items. There’s also a small section of the floor that can be lowered, making a recessed section for smaller items to be stored in.

Interior storage is limited to the usual central cubbies, door pockets and glovebox. These struck us as neither especially large nor disappointingly small, although the positioning of the front cupholders results in bottles obstructing some of the climate control buttons.

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Is it easy to park?

The 5 Series is a large car – it’s quite long – but doesn’t feel intimidatingly big in car parks or tighter streets.

All models come with park assist and a rear-view camera to make life that little bit easier, too, along with folding door mirrors to protect them in pinched spaces.

View dimensions in the BMW 5 Series specs pages

Safety

• Lots of high-tech safety kit…
• …but much of it is only optional
• Windscreen wipers strangely poor

Euro NCAP gave the BMW 5 Series a full five stars when it tested it in 2017, and the standard specification covers all the critical bases, including six airbags, electronic stability control and tyre-pressure monitoring system.

The hybrids come with some extra tech including cross traffic alert, blindspot monitoring and active side collision protection.

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Where it really gets exciting is in the realm of optional extras – particularly the Driving Assistant Plus package, which wraps up a whole suite of driver aids intended to keep you better informed and even take control of the car for short periods.

What Driving Assistant Plus includes:

• Evasion Aid – alerts you to unexpected obstacles ahead and helps control the car during sudden movements to avoid them
• Lane Change Assistant – pitched as “comfort enhancing”, actually allows you to change lane just by activating the indicator for two seconds, completely controlling the steering of the car into the next lane
• Lane Keeping Assistant with active side collision protection – not only warns you if you’re about to stray out of lane but also if another vehicle seems set on a collision course
• Steering and Lane Control Assistant – will steer the car for short periods, as long as it can detect the lane markings either side; works up to 130mph and requires only a light touch on the steering wheel to reset, but is easily confused by slip roads
• Priority warning – spots and alerts you to places where you need to give way, especially stop signs
• Wrong-way warning – tells you if you’re about to drive the wrong way down a street or motorway
• Active Cruise Control – not only maintains a safe distance to the car in front but spots and can react to changes in the speed limit too

Our only real negative on the safety front strangely comes from the windscreen wipers; they only have two standard speed settings, which means you can’t set them to maximum speed manually during really tempestuous weather.

The automatic setting will go faster, but doesn’t do so consistently – which can be unnerving in a downpour, to say the least.

WATCH: BMW 5 Series Saloon Euro NCAP crash test: