Motor Trend Pits BMW M5 Against Porsche Panamera GTS

Jonny Lieberman took two German thunder chariots, the BMW M5 and Porsche Panamera GTS, to the desert for a quarter-mile blast and then up to altitude for duty in the high mountain esses.

In black and white, the M5 has it all over the GTS. Although the properly trunked sedan weighs 39 pounds more, its 4.4-liter, twin-turbo V8 harnesses 130 more horsepower and 196 more pound-feet than the naturally-aspirated 4.8-liter V8 in the GTS. The BMW starts at nearly $20,000 less than the Porsche, a savings which skyrockets to $42,000 when as-tested prices for these particular cars are compared. For those wondering, an even greater price disparity is the reason MT didn't use the Panamera Turbo, which might have seemed a fairer car to use for comparison from a performance standpoint.

But we don't live black-and-white lives, do we? There are reasons for Porsche reverence, one of them that it has always done more with what might, at first, seem like less.