A bit late to the angel eye party: 2001 M5

[Beej]

The steering was my least favorite thing about our 540i, at highway speeds it was fine, parking it in a NOVA-sized parking lots was not, it felt like driving a city bus, you had to turn the wheel like 4 complete times to get it into a spot. The E36 has the typical 90s steering thats extremely slow off center but it's not nearly as bad as the E39 was.

Good point on the steering, and probably worth mentioning. It is a little "loose" on center, but nowhere near as bad as I thought it'd be based on the zomg-recirculating-ball internet drama. Apparently M5's are 14.7:1 ratio where your 540 was 17.9:1, so that might explain the city bus thing on the 540. I don't have any such complaints on the M5, but it has a slightly smaller steering wheel I think, too. Turning radius is worse than the M3 (and even the Jeep, I think), which is sorta annoying.

It feels like (I haven't looked into it) it's speed dependent in the power steering department, too. Faster feels like there's less assist, which so far I don't really care for.