Transcription
This is a BMW M5, an E39 generation. It's arguably the greatest BMW M5 of all time. It's known for having a very, very good V8. Not this one though. This M5 doesn't have eight cylinders; it's actually got 10. It's an engine from a company called Volkswagen. What the hell is going on with this Beamer?
The whole story starts with Ferdinand Piëch, the CEO of Volkswagen from 1993 to 2002 and then chairman all the way to 2015. He was a true tyrant of a leader, firing anyone who was seen to have made the same mistake twice, no matter how high up the chain. I think the general vibe back then was, "Don't mess with Ferdinand."
The good thing for us nerds is that he was a massive engine guy—in fact, the engine guy to end all engine guys. At university, his thesis was on the design of an F1 engine. He was involved in the Porsche 917 development; he initiated the 5-cylinder Audi Quattro World Rally car; and he designed Mercedes truck engines. If he had his way, he would have developed a 16-cylinder engine for the 917, following in the footsteps of his granddad who engineered the 16-cylinder engine in the pre-war Auto Union. This project got canned, but he made sure not to miss the chance again. Once he fired up Bugatti properly, he always thought on a grand scale, and that was made especially apparent with his demands for the Volkswagen engine department.
He put this person, Sabina Willich, in charge of creating the greatest and strangest array of engine layouts ever seen in one car company's lineup: everything from tiny, efficient V-twins to wacky V5s, the legendary VR6, twin-turbo V10s, W8s, W12s, and then the crowning glory of the Veyron's W16. Piëch was also in charge of the Dieselgate scandal that kind of ruined the entire car industry, but we'll stay away from that today.
There is one engine missing from this lineup though: W8, W12… where's the W10? Well, it's in here. Piëch left no stone unturned; he wanted a W10 built, and they built it. I've been given permission to drive this incredibly special machine today, but before then, let's dive into its engineering and answer the main question: why is there a W10 in this M5?
Sabina was really clever in her strategy for creating all of those Volkswagen engine layouts, both by using modular engine layouts but also using very narrow-angle V's, known as VR engines. Let's start with the most popular: the VR6. From that, you can really suss out all of the other engine layouts. If you double a VR6, put it on a common crank, you end up with a W12 engine, like you see in Bentleys and Volkswagen Phaetons. If you then modulate down to a VR4, double it, back at cranking, you have a W8, just like that. Pant there. If you modulate up to a VR8, whacka cranking, you have a W16, a Veyron engine. So, VR5, double it, crank—we have our W10 today.
Volkswagen wanted to test their new engine, and they wanted to take on the BMW M5 with this powertrain because they didn't have a car that was comparable at the time. The decision was made and signed off by Mr. Piëch to simply use an E39 M5 as the mule. It had the space under the bonnet for one of these; it had a gearbox that could cope with the power; and Piëch wanted the resultant W10 car to be a manual, so one of these was perfect as a mule vehicle.
This engine swap has been done immaculately. All the wiring and plumbing is really neatly organized; it's been really nicely done. Being into thermodynamics while I was at university, I'm always fascinated by the cooling systems on cars like these. I was wondering whether they just used the BMW's radiator, though. It does look like there's some custom welding on here, so I reckon this is a one-of-one W10 radiator—very cool.
Looking at the actual engine itself, it's very reminiscent of the W8s and W12s. If you kind of pop the plastic cover off them, they look exactly like this. Although, the materials used in this engine bay are unreal. For most mule vehicles, they'll cheap out on materials—just plastics everywhere. The airboxes and the plenums on this engine are carbon fiber. It honestly looks like a race car engine bay in here; it just shows how far they took this thing. The perfect example of how much care went into this engine swap is the organization of the HT leads. Look at these, beautifully assembled up the top of the engine—what a thing! They clearly poured some real time and care into this prototype.
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The owner of all of this is clearly a big VW engine guy, and we've actually got numerous W engines kicking about in here. This is a W12 straight out of a Volkswagen Phaeton. It's so cool to see it out on display because you can immediately see what the advantage of this engine is. This is, I would say, about the size of a V8, and yet you're fitting in 12 cylinders. Whack some turbos on that, and you can create some serious power and some serious noise. And as I said earlier, if you look at the top here, look at this plan—it's basically exactly the same as our W10. You could say the W10 is basically just a chopped-down W12—very cool thing.
Now we get into the kind of one-of-one stuff, or very limited engines. This is a W12 Le Mans engine. Apparently, Bentley were developing this to take to Le Mans and have their full-bore W12 in, I imagine, a Continental GT. The regulations changed, so they went V8 instead, so this engine basically got put in a scrap heap, and somehow the owner of all of this has managed to get his hands on it. The manifolds on this thing are unbelievable. The ones on the outside are kind of cool, but it's these inner ones here—I imagine it's the same on a W16 as well. Look at these intakes; look how tall this engine is. To fit that into your Bentley race car, it would have to be mounted so low or have a huge bonnet bulge—it's massive.
Then, to the subject of today: I said there was a W10 made by Volkswagen. Turns out there are two, and we've got them within about 10 feet of each other. That's the working one, and this was clearly a spare that's now on display like this. Look at this engine—all the timing gear going on in here—what a beauty, a W10 engine that's really lengthwise. I would say that's honestly not much bigger than a V6. And the other side to these W engines is because they're narrow-angle; they're only the width of a V engine. If you were to put two actual V8s, for example, and weld them together, you'd be out here; it, it just be enormous; there'd be no point. But because they use those narrow-angle V's, single cylinder heads either side, it can be the same width as a V. What I do find interesting is that the W8 is supposed to be about 280 horsepower, and yet the W10 is apparently—we'll find out later today—maybe 500. That's quite a jump, so what's happening in this engine is not happening in that, but what a beast of a motor.
Now these are cool to see in person. What's amazing is this drawing back here. This is a very special insight into that crazy era of VW engine development. The owner is fairly sure these sketches came from a notebook of Piëch himself. There is some serious stuff going on here; I would love to have been involved in this meeting. There's an engine and a gearbox, and you have to kind of decipher all the numbers and writing around it to figure out what's going on, but it looks like here there's some genuine modulation, like we were talking about earlier. We've got R3, R3, and V6, so maybe 3, 3 coming together to be a V6. Then up here, 1.5 for Golf, 1.5 for a Golf, 150 PS—who knows? Who knows what they were chatting about? Then over here, V6, V8, V12, 2L, 2.8, 4L—they are interesting displacements for those engines; they're quite small displacements. 200 PS, 200 PS V6 2L again—no idea. But then down here you've got the big boy, W8, 600 PS. Now the original Bugatti engine was going to be a W18, but they decided to go for quad-turbo W16, but this is what we think is happening over here: 9-cylinder, 9-cylinder either side of the engine that you've got gearbox and drivetrain happening here. It looks like they were working on a genuine W18 engine. There's another W18 that was more like a Y in the Bugatti prototype, but this looks like what we're chatting about here, but 18 cylinders—absolute madness! Imagine being in this meeting.
Piëch was apparently so impressed with how this car drove that he used it commuting to work in a W10 BMW. I imagine most people thought he was massively taking the piss, driving about in a rival's flagship super saloon, but in actual fact, he was doing some genuine R&D. Piëch said that this thing was pretty good. Then, shall we see if he was right? What does a W10 sound like down at 2,500 RPM? Nothing much—quite guttural, just like all the W engines seem to be, even the Veyron. It's a bit clacky; it's actually not really that smooth a motor. Then you floor it—immediately those 10-cylinder harmonics come straight through you. Immediately you know there's 10 cylinders pumping underneath that bonnet. It wants to tear up its rear tires. Now, I don't know if this thing has a rev limiter, so I'm not going to rev it right out; also, it's a one-of-one, so I cannot break this thing. 2,000, 3,000, 4,000… bit more… come on… 4,000, 5,000… This is a quick car. I never thought a Volkswagen W engine would be one that really comes on cam, but it does. The pickup, it honestly almost feels turbocharged once you get it past 3 and 1/2. I wonder what the camshaft design is on these, whether they have a kind of different lobe going on. Almost feels like it's got race cams in it, but yet it idles really nicely. It works; it just works. It shouldn't, but it does.
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Let's use some eSIM data to find the best local driving road to Google Maps. In terms of the amount of power this thing's putting out, some stats online say 450, others say 500, a few say 507 PS on the dot. Let's feel it. Oh, okay—it feels every bit 500 horsepower, and naturally aspirated, and immediately that's… that's just a special engine. Makes me wonder what were they doing with the W8—only 280 with two cylinders less—like, what were they up to? I wonder if there's some variable cam stuff going on with this engine; maybe that is why it creates so much more power than the W8.
Out of sheer interest, the owner took the M5 to a local dyno after our shoot, and the W10 made 480 horsepower and 592 Newton meters of torque. So the proposed numbers for the car are pretty much bang on. It's a bittersweet thing, this car. Why did they can the W10 of all of them? To can this one seems the most Larry, and yet it never got to see the light of day until today. This thing has a standalone ECU. Volkswagen went clean, fresh start with the ECU. They apparently haven't plumbed in ABS or traction control. This is a 10-cylinder, manual, rear-wheel-drive super saloon with zero driver aids. Yeah, I can see why Ferdinand liked it.
Just to add to the rawness of it, the instrument bicycle in front of me is pure race car. It's just got a rev counter, which is very mechanical; it's very jittery up and down the revs. Then there's some digital readouts which you can toggle using this button here: lap time—yeah, sure. This is straight out of a race car: fuel, 61L, oil temperature, water temperature, oil pressure. It does have a digital speedo; it doesn't work.
There is one thing that's letting it down slightly in terms of being a normal car; it starts to give it away that it's a mule, and that is the amount of fuel/exhaust vapor that's coming into the cabin. It's quite revvy, which I didn't expect at all, but I think a lot of that is down to—it feels like it's got a really light flywheel on it. When you dip the clutch to go change gear, they dive away inside here as well. It's… it's a really plush car. It's got the car phone. Can I… can I remove that? Oh, I can. Hello, Moto. Ferdinand Piëch potentially made some Volkswagen business calls using this—how cool is that? I can totally understand why Dr. Piëch wanted to daily this thing. That was 6,000… Oh, do you know what? Somehow the gear change is the best BMW gear change I've ever experienced. BMW gear shifts are… are not known for being amazing; it's Porsche that always nail those. This is the best one I've had, and yet it's mated to a Frankenstein Volkswagen engine. How does that work?
By the way, if you want to see more of Izzy, me, and the rest of the Drive Tribe team, make sure to subscribe to our second channel, More Drive Tribe: broken-down Range Rovers, buying dream cars, more of the boss—go check it out through the link in the description below. This thing would go toe-to-toe with an E60 M5 absolutely no worries at all. What would this project have eventually got to if they'd kept going? Would it have been a Phaeton R, something like that? I love that this car isn't a pristine museum piece, but it's instead covered in dings like any other 25-year-old dead car. I'd like to hope this door ding was made by Piëch in the Volkswagen staff car park. This car is such a sleeper; so I think it's actually a shame that it has stickers denoting what's going on under the skin. I'd be stripping them off ASAP. Apparently, this W10 car ended up costing €2 million to develop. It is for sale, with the owner wanting about as much as a Ferrari Portofino.
Whether you are a Volkswagen fan or a BMW fan, I do realize how lucky I am. I've actually never driven an E39 M5 or a Volkswagen product with a W engine. This is my first experience. I realize that's a silly situation to be in; I'm absolutely loving it. What a car this is. What's even sillier is that that statement is now out of date, as I've now driven a certain car with a W16. I like my job.
What's so great about the M5 as a platform is it's the perfect recipe for a mule car. At the end of the day, most people just think it's a 5 Series BMW, so if a manufacturer wants to do sneaky, covert engineering work, it's perfect. It's also built to deal with proper performance car levels of power, grip, and dynamics from factory, so for this sort of project, it's good to go. It wasn't just VW that went down this route; McLaren used an E34 M5 to test the engine for the F1 road car. Somehow they shoehorned that 6.1L V12 under the bonnet of one and put plenty of covert test miles on it.
This car has got me thinking: what other crazy skunkworks projects are out there that we simply don't know about, or didn't know about when they were happening? You might pull up at the lights beside a 5 Series Touring and think it's just a 530d, but in actual fact, it's got Bugatti's V16 under the bonnet. You'd never know.
Ferdinand Piëch died at the age of 82 back in 2019. Rest in peace, my man. All of us engine nerds out there salute you. If you guys know of any silly skunkworks projects like this out there, DM me on Instagram, Mike Fernie. Let's find them and drive them.