You get the feeling BMW’s Motorsport division has sold out. How else do you explain the decision to create a four-wheel-drive, automatic SUV with an M badge? And not just one either, but a pair of go-faster behemoths (there’s also an X6M).

The reason it’s taken Munich 10 years to create a rapid X5, in case you’re wondering, is that the M division didn’t have the technology to engineer the placid-but-potent X5M it wanted. In that time, the boffins experimented, creating the mad, 700bhp X5 Le Mans in the process. You really must Google it. After seeing it in the flesh for the first time in Austria last month before driving the new M, I couldn’t help but hope that even a slither of that car could make it into the latest X5.

Never get your hopes up. On first impressions, you’re awed by how roll is kept to a bare minimum through the EDC, active antiroll bars and self-levelling air suspension. Then you’re roused further by how it also manages to become comfortable and supremely refined with just one setting adjustment in the ride. But when you build up speed and then try to shave it off coming into a tight bend, the 390mm front discs have to work hard as the body nosedives when braking from over 200kph. It was most apparent on the Salzburgring circuit, a short track that used to host German touring car races in the ’80s. BMW decided it was a good place to demonstrate the X5M’s capabilities.

It was. But only on the long straights. In the tightening hairpins, there’s an underlying feeling that what you’re driving is a bit superficial. The xDrive system has been reprogrammed for rear bias and the Dynamic Performance Control has been tweaked to better distribute torque and make the most out of every tyre’s grip. You do sense the car trying to tighten its line. The problem is that at the same time, it’s trying to propel you forwards when actually you just want to judge the angle and balance of power through your own inputs. On a track, you need to adapt and let the systems do their thing. It’s on an everyday road where the DPC is at its most effective; when you don’t notice the computers at word. Effective, but not smile-inducing - in a bigger, taller Audi RS6 Avant sort of way.

Luckily, the shared ground between the RS6 and the Beemer is a colossal engine. There’s a new, patented exhaust manifold system, which takes exhaust gas from each cylinder and cleverly routes it to the turbochargers nestled between the V8. It’s an arrangement that looks like complicated plumbing, but it produces instant engine response, 1.4 bars of boost and no turbo lag, hence peak torque starting at 1500rpm. It’s ferocious. Or at least as ferocious as hauling 2.4-tons can be. Disappointingly, the engine note sounds tame in comparison to the acceleration, with only a double-belch from the quad exhaust on upchange providing brief aural pleasure.

If this year’s Car of the Year standoff was judged in terms of engineering achievement, the X5M would be up there with the best of them for such a bold attempt at fighting unavoidable physics. But that isn’t the case. As accomplished as the X5M is, the experience falls short of providing the frolics of previous M cars.