Clash of the Titans | BMW M5 Competition vs. Jaguar Project 8
In 1969, NASA put a man on the moon with roughly 4 kilobytes of onboard computing power. Four. Kilobytes. That’s about the same processing muscle as a budget microwave whose only responsibility is the even rotation of soup.
And yet here we are, in 2026, requiring what feels like the computational output of a minor corporation to ensure that a four-door saloon can deploy its heated cupholders without first consulting Munich.
Jokes aside. I estimate that around 25% of our workshop’s entire workload is devoted to keeping supersaloons alive. Proper 'OG' ones. The sort that look like they should have once been attending a regional sales conference but are secretly capable of rearranging tectonic plates. The overwhelming majority are BMW E34 and E39 M5’s and the occasional RS4. The golden era, when traction control was more of a polite suggestion and Curly Wurly's were a footlong.
But lately, a new breed has been turning up. Louder. Angrier. More powerful. Supersaloons that have clearly been bench-pressing lesser hatchbacks.
The recipe, as ever, is deliciously simple. Business-like styling. Four doors for 2.5 children and a boot large enough to conceal golf clubs from your spouse. And, crucially, a thumping great engine capable of hauling the entire lot up a mountain whether it wants to go or not.
If the shiny BMW on your neighbour’s drive is about keeping up with the Joneses, I’d quite like to see the Joneses attempt to keep up with these.
Contender number one: the magnificent, faintly unhinged Jaguar Project 8. This is what happens when a boffin at JLR drinks too much tabasco sauce and joins a Fight Club. It starts life as an XE saloon and ends up looking like it’s been drafted to play in the NFL. Gone are the 2-litre petrol and, mercifully, diesel engines, replaced by a 5.0-litre supercharged V8 producing 591bhp and 700N.m of torque. When new, it cost £150,000. With a warranty card. As any JLR customer knows all too well, this feels a bit like buying a pet tiger and discovering that it comes with a little tooth cleaning kit that will, at some point, be required.
The competition? The BMW M5... Competition.
This particular Bavarian missile produces 617bhp out of the box, drives all four wheels, and uses a clever eight-speed automatic gearbox to distribute violence with clinical efficiency. It looks more conservative than the Jaguar, this being the F90 generation, before BMW’s designers discovered sharp angles and emotional distress. It can waft into a National Trust car park without anyone suspecting it’s capable of liquefying its own tyres.
The Jaguar, meanwhile, will be popular with geologists. Its low carbon diffusers do a sterling job of collecting gravel from every postcode it visits. They look sensational, mind you, and mean. Really mean. You have to applaud the bravery of such a big manufacturer actually taking such a risqué design all the way through to production. This is not a car designed by committee, but by a designer whose childhood probably featured a lot of Hot Wheels.
The Project 8 is a masterclass in escalation. Bigger carbon-ceramic brakes demand bigger wheels. Bigger wheels require swollen arches. A wider rear track means redesigned rear quarters. Before long, only the roof and front doors remained from the standard XE. To offset the V8’s heft, it gets a carbon fibre bonnet, bumpers and wings. Bilstein suspension (at a thousand pounds per corner) fills whatever space remains in the four cavities and despite looking like it dead-lifts Range Rovers for their lunch money, it weighs just 1,745kg with the rear seats fitted, meaning it remains somewhat ‘chuckable’ even in my plebeian hands.
The M5? Around 1,950kg depending on spec. Not exactly anorexic. But with that weight comes a slightly superior fit and finish. The BMW interior is all cream leather, ambient cocktail bar mood lighting, clean aluminium trim and Teutonic precision. The Jaguar, by contrast, has gone for black. More black. Some additional black, and finished with a touch of Piano black trim that attracts fingerprints like a crime scene investigator.
Which cockpit you prefer comes down to personal preference. Both have sculpted bucket style pews that hug the driver and allow good manoeuvrability to accommodate all heights and shapes. I find myself swinging wildly between the two, my brand loyalty has me doe eyed at the Project 8 for its consistency and exploration of ‘black’. The M5 for its airy spaciousness and familiar RHD layout. Whichever you settle into, both machines are more than comfortable enough for a 10 hour voyage to Monaco or a few laps of the ‘ring.
I make it a rule never to read instruction manuals. If a product requires a manual, the designer has failed. Both cars offer a bewildering array of customisation options buried in their onboard systems. Neither is especially intuitive at first. Eventually you find the suspension settings and sport modes. I tried toggling between Normal and Sport on my usual test road and felt very little difference, so I did what most owners of these cars will do, put them in Comfort mode, and left it there. I’m sure my back thanked me for it.
You see, my fear was that these contemporary saloons would just be calculators. Circuit boards with cupholders. And at low speeds, yes, there’s an element of that. But give either car a proper prod of the throttle and it’s as though a rodeo clown has burst in and drop-kicked the motherboard out of the chassis, and where there’s a rodeo clown running, an enraged bull is sure to follow.
The Jaguar’s four-wheel drive system deploys power like a brick to the face. The beefed-up 8-speed automatic handles proceedings discreetly, like a butler who also happens to know his way around a set of brass knuckles.
Likewise, the BMW also uses an eight-speed automatic, with M Steptronic and Drivelogic, whatever that means. A torque-converter unit robust enough to cope with planetary levels of torque keeps the M5’s S63 4.4-litre twin-turbo V8 pointing in the right direction and churning butter with Olympic efficiency.
In truth, both gearboxes are so accomplished I didn’t feel myself getting frustrated with either of them. Testament really, to just how far automatic gearboxes have come in the last 25 years.
Now. The Jaguar is quick. Very quick.
But, this particular M5 is not standard.
Its owner, clearly a man who finds “adequate” deeply offensive, has treated it to a Stage 2 tune. We’re talking uprated Project Gamma intakes, fettled exhaust, ECU remap, the lot. Power climbs from 617bhp to somewhere north of 800 horsepower. Torque swells from 750N.m to an absurd 1,000N.m.
One thousand Newton metres.
That’s not torque. That’s continental drift, and I would suspect, a void warranty.
And yet, crucially, it remains road legal. Just. It walks a tightrope between Jumanji-levels of insanity and beautifully optimised gearbox software. Nail the throttle and it doesn’t so much accelerate as rearrange the horizon.
This modified M5 is what happens when British eccentricity is injected into sensible German engineering. To the untrained eye, it’s simply a fast executive saloon. Anyone who knows their cars will expect it to be brisk, that’s a given from an M5 . What they won’t expect is just how brisk.
And that, really, is the enduring appeal of the supersaloon. Both of these cars have arrived at the same conclusion, albeit through opposite routes. They both have four doors. They both use lightweight body panels. They both have all-wheel-drive systems, clever 8-Speed transmissions and large V8 engines with forced induction devices bolted on.
They’re just good. Really good. And they should be when they will both set you back north of £100k.
Don’t mention the war…
In closing, the Project 8 is British lunacy at its finest. It's a rogue Mosquito pilot busting dams after hours for the sheer thrill of it. This M5 on the other hand, is a perfect example of what happens when the Tommy’s get their hands on a Heinkel.
- Callum