All Bangle-designed BMWs, as good as they may be from an engineering perspective, are just... well, to put it politely, not beautiful.... (and lets not even get started about iDrive
)
That said, I have test driven the M5 and M6 and actually have a slightly different take on them than BF - when put in sports mode for the hardest suspension and fastest shifts, I find them simply spine-tingling and very similar in feel and response to a hard shifting manual sports car! As many of you know I am a very harsh critic of many of the paddle shifting transmissions out there and am simply bored by the Audi/VW DSG and several of the others, but I found the M5/M6 transmission to be one of the few I liked more than my GTA's (honestly speaking, one of the other ones was BF's GS...). The BMW V10 is an absolutely amazing engine and IMHO sounds fantastic when pushed hard.
I could never get an M6 because I find it just too ugly and impractical, but with my wife pushing me to buy only 5 seaters, the M5 seems a very good choice to me...