Car Deal of the Day: Lease the ultimate estate car for less than you thought
Traditional M5 driving experience
£898 a month
After the sensational V10-powered E61 BMW M5 of the mid-2000s, we yearned to see another M5 Touring and while we've been made to wait, finally the German company has launched a new one.
It's more powerful, practical and gadget-laden than ever before, but thanks to this deal we found via the Auto Express Find A Car service, you can get this stonkingly-fast super-estate for under £900 a month.
This deal comes from Lease Car UK BMW Leasing and is spread out over a three-year period. There's an initial £11,132 deposit required, then monthly payments stand at £898. There's also a 5,000-mile annual limit, although for an extra £63 a month you can extend this to 10,000 miles. Advertisement - Article continues below
For your money, you get a car that's only come around twice before and one that BMW M division enthusiasts have waited 16 years for. The numbers are exceptional: 717bhp from a plug-in hybrid twin-turbocharged V8, 0-62mph in 3.6 seconds and a top speed of 186mph.
But the number that really caused our eyebrows to raise when it was announced last year was the 2,550kg kerbweight. That's a hefty amount for any estate car – especially one that has built a reputation for delectable handling characteristics. Much to our relief, the M5 Touring drives beautifully. That weight is placed well and truly out of mind thanks to a wondrous chassis, rear-wheel steer, adaptive dampers and a natural feel to the quick steering. With all that power and four-wheel drive, the M5 Touring is sensationally quick, too.
The plug-in hybrid side of the powertrain also impresses. It not only brings CO2 emissions down to 45g/km, but increases fuel efficiency (although you'll struggle to match BMW's claimed 141mpg). What we really like about it is the all-electric driving mode, which can provide a refined 42 miles of EV running.
The cabin quality is excellent as you'd expect, and practicality is decent, too. The 500-litre boot may not be as spacious as some rivals, but it'll be more than big enough for a family weekend away.
The Car Deal of the Day selections we make are taken from our own Auto Express Find A Car deals service, which includes the best current offers from car retailers and leasing companies around the UK. Terms and conditions apply, while prices and offers are subject to change and limited availability. If this deal expires, you can find more top BMW M5 Touring leasing offers from leading providers on our BMW M5 Touring deals hub page…
Check out the BMW M5 Touring Deal of the Day or take a look at our previous Car Deal of the Day selection here…
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He insisted on retractable handles, despite repeated warnings from engineers. Since 2018, they have been linked to at least four fatal accidents in Europe and the US, in which five people died. In February 2024, we reported on a particularly tragic case: a fatal crash on a country road near Dobbrikow, in Brandenburg, Germany. Two 18-year-olds were killed when the Tesla they were in slammed into a tree and caught fire. First responders couldn't open the doors because the handles were retracted. The teenagers burned to death in the back seat. A court-appointed expert from Dekra, one of Germany's leading testing authorities, later concluded that, given the retracted handles, the incident 'qualifies as a malfunction'. According to the report, 'the failure of the rear door handles to extend automatically must be considered a decisive factor' in the deaths. 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His thinking, it seems, goes something like this: at some point, the engineers will figure out a technical fix. The same logic applies to his grander vision of autonomous driving: because Musk wants to be first, he lets customers test his unfinished Autopilot system on public roads. It's a principle borrowed from the software world, where releasing apps in beta has long been standard practice. The more users, the more feedback and, over time – often years – something stable emerges. Revenue and market share arrive much earlier. The motto: if you wait, you lose. Musk has taken that mindset to the road. The world is his lab. Everyone else is part of the experiment. By the end of 2023, we knew a lot about how Musk's cars worked – but the way they handle data still felt like a black box. How is that data stored? At what moment does the onboard computer send it to Tesla's servers? We talked to independent experts at the Technical University Berlin. 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The researchers told us they had found an internal database embedded in the system – one built around so-called trigger events. If, for example, the airbag deploys or the car hits an obstacle, the system is designed to save a defined set of data to the black box – and transmit it to Tesla's servers. Unless the vehicles were in a complete network dead zone, in both the Meier and Schuster cases, the cars should have recorded and transmitted that data. Who in the company actually works with that data? We examined testimony from Tesla employees in court cases related to fatal crashes. They described how their departments operate. We cross-referenced their statements with entries in the Tesla Files. A pattern took shape: one team screens all crashes at a high level, forwarding them to specialists – some focused on autopilot, others on vehicle dynamics or road grip. There's also a group that steps in whenever authorities request crash data. Sign up to Inside Saturday The only way to get a look behind the scenes of the Saturday magazine. Sign up to get the inside story from our top writers as well as all the must-read articles and columns, delivered to your inbox every weekend. after newsletter promotion We compiled a list of employees relevant to our reporting. Some we tried to reach by email or phone. For others, we showed up at their homes. If they weren't there, we left handwritten notes. No one wanted to talk. We searched for other crashes. One involved Hans von Ohain, a 33-year-old Tesla employee from Evergreen, Colorado. On 16 May 2022, he crashed into a tree on his way home from a golf outing and the car burst into flames. Von Ohain died at the scene. His passenger survived and told police that von Ohain, who had been drinking, had activated Full Self-Driving. Tesla, however, said it couldn't confirm whether the system was engaged – because no vehicle data was transmitted for the incident. Then, in February 2024, Musk himself stepped in. The Tesla CEO claimed von Ohain had never downloaded the latest version of the software – so it couldn't have caused the crash. Friends of von Ohain, however, told US media he had shown them the system. His passenger that day, who barely escaped with his life, told reporters that hours earlier the car had already driven erratically by itself. 'The first time it happened, I was like, 'Is that normal?'' he recalled asking von Ohain. 'And he was like, 'Yeah, that happens every now and then.'' His account was bolstered by von Ohain's widow, who explained to the media how overjoyed her husband had been at working for Tesla. Reportedly, von Ohain received the Full Self-Driving system as a perk. His widow explained how he would use the system almost every time he got behind the wheel: 'It was jerky, but we were like, that comes with the territory of new technology. We knew the technology had to learn, and we were willing to be part of that.' 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According to Musk, the eight cameras in every Tesla transmit more than 160bn video frames a day to the company's servers. In its owner's manual, Tesla states that its cars may collect even more: 'analytics, road segment, diagnostic and vehicle usage data', all sent to headquarters to improve product quality and features such as autopilot. The company claims it learns 'from the experience of billions of miles that Tesla vehicles have driven'. It is a powerful promise: a fleet of millions of cars, constantly feeding raw information into a gargantuan processing centre. Billions – trillions – of data points, all in service of one goal: making cars drive better and keeping drivers safe. At the start of this year, Musk got a chance to show the world what he meant. On 1 January 2025, at 8.39am, a Tesla Cybertruck exploded outside the Trump International Hotel Las Vegas. The man behind the incident – US special forces veteran Matthew Livelsberger – had rented the vehicle, packed it with fireworks, gas canisters and grenades, and parked it in front of the building. Just before the explosion, he shot himself in the head with a .50 calibre Desert Eagle pistol. 'This was not a terrorist attack, it was a wakeup call. Americans only pay attention to spectacles and violence,' Livelsberger wrote in a letter later found by authorities. 'What better way to get my point across than a stunt with fireworks and explosives.' The soldier miscalculated. Seven bystanders suffered minor injuries. The Cybertruck was destroyed, but not even the windows of the hotel shattered. Instead, with his final act, Livelsberger revealed something else entirely: just how far the arm of Tesla's data machinery can reach. 'The whole Tesla senior team is investigating this matter right now,' Musk wrote on X just hours after the blast. 'Will post more information as soon as we learn anything. We've never seen anything like this.' Later that day, Musk posted again. Tesla had already analysed all relevant data – and was ready to offer conclusions. 'We have now confirmed that the explosion was caused by very large fireworks and/or a bomb carried in the bed of the rented Cybertruck and is unrelated to the vehicle itself,' he wrote. 'All vehicle telemetry was positive at the time of the explosion.' Suddenly, Musk wasn't just a CEO; he was an investigator. He instructed Tesla technicians to remotely unlock the scorched vehicle. He handed over internal footage captured up to the moment of Tesla CEO had turned a suicide attack into a showcase of his superior technology. Yet there were critics even in the moment of glory. 'It reveals the kind of sweeping surveillance going on,' warned David Choffnes, executive director of the Cybersecurity and Privacy Institute at Northeastern University in Boston, when contacted by a reporter. 'When something bad happens, it's helpful, but it's a double-edged sword. Companies that collect this data can abuse it.' There are other examples of what Tesla's data collection makes possible. We found the case of David and Sheila Brown, who died in August 2020 when their Model 3 ran a red light at 114mph in Saratoga, California. Investigators managed to reconstruct every detail, thanks to Tesla's vehicle data. It shows exactly when the Browns opened a door, unfastened a seatbelt, and how hard the driver pressed the accelerator – down to the millisecond, right up to the moment of impact. Over time, we found more cases, more detailed accident reports. The data definitely is there – until it isn't. In many crashes when Teslas inexplicably veered off the road or hit stationary objects, investigators didn't actually request data from the company. When we asked authorities why, there was often silence. Our impression was that many prosecutors and police officers weren't even aware that asking was an option. In other cases, they acted only when pushed by victims' families. In the Meier case, Tesla told authorities, in a letter dated 25 June 2018, that the last complete set of vehicle data was transmitted nearly two weeks before the crash. The only data from the day of the accident was a 'limited snapshot of vehicle parameters' – taken 'approximately 50 minutes before the incident'. However, this snapshot 'doesn't show anything in relation to the incident'. As for the black box, Tesla warned that the storage modules were likely destroyed, given the condition of the burned-out vehicle. Data transmission after a crash is possible, the company said – but in this case, it didn't happen. In the end, investigators couldn't even determine whether driver-assist systems were active at the time of the crash. The Schuster case played out similarly. Prosecutors in Stralsund, Germany, were baffled. The road where the crash happened is straight, the asphalt was dry and the weather at the time of the accident was clear. Anke Schuster kept urging the authorities to examine Tesla's telemetry data. When prosecutors did formally request the data recorded by Schuster's car on the day of the crash, it took Tesla more than two weeks to respond – and when it did, the answer was both brief and bold. The company didn't say there was no data. It said that there was 'no relevant data'. The authorities' reaction left us stunned. We expected prosecutors to push back – to tell Tesla that deciding what's relevant is their job, not the company's. But they didn't. Instead, they closed the case. The hackers from TU Berlin pointed us to a study by the Netherlands Forensic Institute, an independent division of the ministry of justice and security. In October 2021, the NFI published findings showing it had successfully accessed the onboard memories of all major Tesla models. The researchers compared their results with accident cases in which police had requested data from Tesla. Their conclusion was that while Tesla formally complied with those requests, it omitted large volumes of data that might have proved useful. Tesla's credibility took a further hit in a report released by the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in April 2024. The agency concluded that Tesla failed to adequately monitor whether drivers remain alert and ready to intervene while using its driver-assist systems. It reviewed 956 crashes, field data and customer communications, and pointed to 'gaps in Tesla's telematic data' that made it impossible to determine how often autopilot was active during crashes. If a vehicle's antenna was damaged or it crashed in an area without network coverage, even serious accidents sometimes went unreported. Tesla's internal statistics include only those crashes in which an airbag or other pyrotechnic system deployed – something that occurs in just 18% of police-reported cases. This means that the actual accident rate is significantly higher than Tesla discloses to customers and investors. There's more. Two years prior, the NHTSA had flagged something strange – something suspicious. In a separate report, it documented 16 cases in which Tesla vehicles crashed into stationary emergency vehicles. In each, autopilot disengaged 'less than one second before impact' – far too little time for the driver to react. Critics warn that this behaviour could allow Tesla to argue in court that autopilot was not active at the moment of impact, potentially dodging responsibility. The YouTuber Mark Rober, a former engineer at Nasa, replicated this behaviour in an experiment on 15 March 2025. He simulated a range of hazardous situations, in which the Model Y performed significantly worse than a competing vehicle. The Tesla repeatedly ran over a crash-test dummy without braking. The video went viral, amassing more than 14m views within a few days. The real surprise came after the experiment. Fred Lambert, who writes for the blog Electrek, pointed out the same autopilot disengagement that the NHTSA had documented. 'Autopilot appears to automatically disengage a fraction of a second before the impact as the crash becomes inevitable,' Lambert noted. And so the doubts about Tesla's integrity pile up. In the Tesla Files, we found emails and reports from a UK-based engineer who led Tesla's Safety Incident Investigation programme, overseeing the company's most sensitive crash cases. His internal memos reveal that Tesla deliberately limited documentation of particular issues to avoid the risk of this information being requested under subpoena. Although he pushed for clearer protocols and better internal processes, US leadership resisted – explicitly driven by fears of legal exposure. We contacted Tesla multiple times with questions about the company's data practices. We asked about the Meier and Schuster cases – and what it means when fatal crashes are marked 'resolved' in Tesla's internal system. We asked the company to respond to criticism from the US traffic authority and to the findings of Dutch forensic investigators. We also asked why Tesla doesn't simply publish crash data, as Musk once promised to do, and whether the company considers it appropriate to withhold information from potential US court orders. Tesla has not responded to any of our questions. Elon Musk boasts about the vast amount of data his cars generate – data that, he claims, will not only improve Tesla's entire fleet but also revolutionise road traffic. But, as we have witnessed again and again in the most critical of cases, Tesla refuses to share it. Tesla's handling of crash data affects even those who never wanted anything to do with the company. Every road user trusts the car in front, behind or beside them not to be a threat. Does that trust still stand when the car is driving itself? Internally, we called our investigation into Tesla's crash data Black Box. At first, because it dealt with the physical data units built into the vehicles – so-called black boxes. But the devices Tesla installs hardly deserve the name. Unlike the flight recorders used in aviation, they're not fireproof – and in many of the cases we examined, they proved useless. Over time, we came to see that the name held a second meaning. A black box, in common parlance, is something closed to the outside. Something opaque. Unknowable. And while we've gained some insight into Tesla as a company, its handling of crash data remains just that: a black box. Only Tesla knows how Elon Musk's vehicles truly work. Yet today, more than 5m of them share our roads. Some names have been changed. This is an edited extract from The Tesla Files by Sönke Iwersen and Michael Verfürden, published on 24 July by Penguin Michael Joseph at £22. To support the Guardian, order your copy at Delivery charges may apply.
