It has been on the market for just two years, and BMW has already delivered 20,000 M5 and M6 sports cars equipped with its 500 horsepower V10 engine. Based on BMW’s 10-cylinder Formula 1 engine, the powerplant is capable of 8250 rpm with an output of 373 kilowatts or 507 bhp and a maximum torque of 520 Newton-metres.
The 20,000th engine was produced on the so-called Special Engine Line at the BMW plant in Munich just days ago. At 8,000 crankshaft rotations per minute, each of the ten pistons travels around 20 metres per second – almost as much as the pistons in a Formula 1 engine.
Technical highlights include a torsionally stiff bedplate construction, weight-optimised full slipper pistons, single-section cylinder heads made of aluminium and the so-called cross-flow cooling concept which ensures an even temperature throughout the cylinder head. Lastly, an engine management system capable of 200 million operations per second calculates ignition timing, charge, injection quantity and timing for for each separate cylinder and firing cycle.
