🏎 Max Begins His Search For the Ultimate Road Trip Car

GM. This is MaxFindsCars, the only newsletter that’ll admit its overly optimistic opinions have the full capacity to bankrupt you if you ever listen to it.

I bring this up because…

Today’s car has a forty thousand dollar ticking time bomb under the hood.

And its also THE SICKEST ROAD TRIP CAR YOU CAN BUY FOR ~$20k

(brief aside, we are doing a new thing on MaxFindsCars that I am demonstrating a bit here. let’s call it ‘MaxFindsMeACar’. in this case, Max is finding you a great road trip car for $20k. so, if you have a category of car, budget, and/or other stipulations, please leave a review in the poll at the bottom of this newsletter and include your desired parameters and I may just do a whole newsletter on finding YOU a car that fits that description)

HERE IT IS: A 2006 BMW M5

• 🌏️ Driven around the world: 2.6x

• 🎼 Song to Get the Vibes Right: Can’t You Hear Me Knocking

  • The beginning of this song is my personal favorite for getting amped to start a road trip.

• 🏇 Can beat 500 (!) horses in a fight

• 💰️ Predicted Price: $20,460

• 📆 Auction Ends: Thursday, May 18th, 2023

FIRST: If you’ve heard the conventional hubbub about these E60 BMW M5’s, you probably think I’m an idiot for calling this an awesome road trip car.

You’re thinking “Max, you want your road trip car to actually GET TO THE DESTINATION without its engine blowing up.”

You’re going to need to cut me some slack… as I write this, I am about an hour removed from an 8 hour road trip in a Chevy Cruze that I may or may not have done while nursing a hangover from a friends’ bachelor party. Note: ‘may or may not’ in this case means I definitely definitely did do that and definitely am nursing that hangover.

In any case…

Let’s put aside the fact that this may be the least reliable BMW of all time.

Let’s ignore the fact that there are about 8 significant failure points on this car that cost multiple thousands to replace.

Let’s focus on the fact that I, for no good reason, think all of the reliability and cost of maintenance issues on this car are overblown.

I BELIEVE that there is a Rockefeller/Standard Oil-type cartel going on here;

E60 M5 owners are trying to convince us that this thing isn’t worth the trouble of owning, all the while they are laughing to themselves as they stockpile the remaining E60 M5’s on the market so they can sell them for 5x the price in a few years when we all WAKE UP and realize…

What Makes The E60 BMW M5 So Cool?

• It has EVERYTHING you’d want in a road trip car

• It basically has a FORMULA ONE CAR ENGINE

• And you can buy it on the CHEAP

It has EVERYTHING you’d want in a road trip car

Okay, what do I mean ‘road trip car’?

What do I (and what should you) want from a road trip car?

And why in the WORLD would I (and you) want a road trip car with an engine notorious for blowing up, and sticking you with a FORTY THOUSAND DOLLAR repair bill?

Let’s cover the last thing first…

As much as getting to your destination is great, is anything better than all of a sudden having a REALLY good reason to say ‘no’ to plans?

On top of that, there are few things better than a good ‘broken down on the side of the road’ story! I have some good ones I’ll tell you kids some day.

If your engine blows up on the highway, you’ll almost certainly get a great story out of the deal AND once you get a tow, you have a great excuse to not follow through on whatever plans that had you road tripping in the first place! That’s a win win.

Plus, you’re probably going to be in slightly better condition than uhh… this person (as far as highway car totaling incidents go): https://youtu.be/v4qfWknMJMA?t=6

NOW THAT YOU’RE CONVINCED of my genius automotive reliability refuting logic, what ACTUALLY makes this car awesome for road trips:

1) It is comfy af

BMW 5 Series’ are comfortable, luxury sedans. This one is a bit more stiff because its the M5 (the top of the line, sportiest version of the 5 series), but its comfy nonetheless.

2) It has an automatic transmission (kinda)

Some car hardos might call me a wimp for not exclusively having manual transmission cars… but the reality is this: if you’re in a traffic jam, shifting in and out of first gear for an hour and NOT REGRETTING taking your manual transmission car on that road trip, you’re crazy.

There’s definitely a cutoff where the fun of a manual transmission loses vs knowing you don’t have to do a bunch of right-legged leg press exercises after your drive to make sure you don’t end up all lopsided with one mega leg from kicking your left foot into the clutch hundreds of times during your drive.

I think that cutoff is the 6 hour mark. I suspect as I get older that number will decrease.

PLUS technically this thing has a SMG (Sequential Manual Gearbox) with paddle shifters, so you CAN shift it manually when you want to really rip on it.

Best of both worlds!

3) It’s fast af for… uhh… safely reaching highway speeds

As we all know, you need 500 horsepower to safely reach highway speeds on an on-ramp.

Alternatively, think of all the things that would be harder without 500 horsepower!

What if your wife was in labor and you needed to get to the hospital really quick? Or or or what if you have the sudden urge to enter a NASCAR race on a whim and disappear into thin air afterwards?

Probably need a quick car for that!

A few more minor points on why this car is so perfect for road trips before we proceed, dear reader…

• It’s big enough that you can fit a couple passengers in the back reasonably comfortably

• It’s a cool car, but not in an obnoxious way. It’s classy cool - the type that makes you feel a little proud when (if) you reach your destination and pull up the in-laws driveway with it. It looks like an, albeit slightly sporty, German sedan to all but a select few people that know…

It basically has a FORMULA ONE CAR ENGINE

Before I proceed, please join me in a brief meditation…

Put your headphones in, take a few deep breaths, and listen to the glory that was V10 engines in Formula One cars…

Now that we are all feeling centered…

The V10 era of Formula One is a fan favorite historically, largely because of the incredible, screaming sound of those high pitched, high revving V10 engines.

These days, Formula One is powered by V6 hybrid engines, which EVENTUALLY generated one of the most incredible seasons F1 has ever seen, but in general is not looked upon with the same nostalgic allure as those glorious V10s.

SO… back in 2002 BMW was in the F1 game for a stint making engines for Williams F1 team.

And the V10 they made for Williams was pretty insane - it revved to 20,000 rpm (most road cars rev to maybe 6500 rpm tops, even today), & was an 800+ horsepower MONSTER.

Now, unfortunately, for many reasons that I’m sure were all very practical, cost saving, and reasonable, BMW didn’t take that exact engine and put it in a road car.

They did, however, take the same materials, construction methods, and lessons learned from building V10’s in F1 to design a new one that would be produced in that same manufacturing plant…

and stuck it in THIS BMW M5, making it (in my very correct opinion) the most INCREDIBLE sounding sedan ever made. No exaggeration.

And the craziest thing is…

This is the cheapest generation of M5 out there.

The older ones have appreciated into the 30s, 40s, and 50s (key: in thousands of US dollars) for ones in solid shape.

And the newer ones haven’t depreciated enough to be below $35k in most cases.

But this…

is the only one with an F1 inspired V10, and is maybe the prettiest looking out of all of them.

AND you can buy this one for around $20,000.

AN F1 CAR WITH FOUR DOORS FOR TWENTY GRAND.

A damn bargain folks.

SOMEONE BUY IT OR I WILL.

And remember… (a couple things this time!)

First, reminder of this blurb from above:

and lastly… reminder!

MaxFindsCars.com is not, technically, free! By subscribing, dear reader, you have agreed to tell your friends about it.

In fact, I believe the contract specifically stated you had to each subscribe 100 of your closest friends, colleagues, enemies, exes, priests, pets, & sugar mommas. I’ll have to check the fine print to be sure, but you all may as well get started spreading the word in the meantime.

That's a wrap for today. New Editions come out every Monday and Friday! While you wait, go out and drive! And if you want more, be sure to follow Max’s Twitter (@maxjzin)

• 🏎️💨 Contact for advertising

• 🏷️💲 Contact to promote a car sale

I WANT REVIEWS WITH EITHER ‘AIRLINE THAT DELAYED YOUR FLIGHT’ OR ‘COFFEE SHOP WHERE YOU’RE TRYING TO HIT ON THE BARISTA’ ENERGY

LIKE THIS ONE

OR THIS ONE