Fast and Furious

If you like high-tech toys that drive very, very fast, the 500-horsepower 2008 BMW M5 sedan is the quintessential road master. With advanced German engineering packed into a luxury four-door, the M5 has 11 shift programs, a sequential manual/automatic gearbox with steering wheel paddles, a multifunction midconsole iDrive controller and a V-10 engine to power the seven-speed transmission. This $82,900 car gets just 11 city/17 highway miles per gallon, but you may decide the M5's extraordinary performance and presence are worth every dollar, including the $3,000 gas-guzzler tax. Also worth considering: the Audi S8, Jaguar XF and Mercedes-Benz CLS63.

Jill Amadio is an international award-winning automotive journalist and author.

This article was originally published in the January 2008 print edition of Entrepreneur with the headline: Fast and Furious.