LONDON, England (CNN) -- Prejudice is a funny thing. I was prepared not to like BMW's M6. Not that I thought it would be a bad car -- BMW, as a rule, isn't prone to making duff automobiles -- it's just I wasn't entirely sure what it was supposed to be. An executive coupe with a 5-liter V10 engine and 500 bhp? With a price tag that could buy you a Porsche 911 or most of an Aston Martin V8 Vantage? What fresh nonsense was this? But prejudice is there to be challenged.



The aggressive front air intakes, 19" alloy wheels and carbon fiber roof mean that this isn't any ordinary 6-Series



Taking delivery of the M6 at my home in Brighton, southern England, I felt the car looked ever so slightly out of place. After all I live in an electoral ward which elected three Green representatives to the City council and is predicted to deliver the first Green Party member to the national government at the next general election. Muscular sports cars aren't common sights on my street (someone once parked a Porsche Cayenne Turbo here but he got a dirty look for it).



An acquaintance, Kevin, strolled past. "Hello," I said, "it's not mine". Second-guessing his likely prejudices I added, "It's rather ostentatious, I know."



"I don't know," replied Kevin, "I think it's quite understated, quite elegant."



One prejudice quashed.



My wife and I then filled the surprisingly roomy trunk with our luggage and various gifts (the weekend being the occasion of my father-in-law's 70th birthday) and prepared for our journey to the Staffordshire moorlands in central England.



You can spend a lot of time preparing for a journey in an M6. You can choose a location for the sat-nav to direct you to and whether the directions are displayed as a map or as a perspective diagram. You can choose to listen to CD, radio or an external audio source and then modify the acoustic properties with a graphic equalizer and various surround sound settings. You can program the "M" button on the steering wheel so that the various suspension, gearing and power settings can be switched between sedate motorway driving and utter lunacy. You can adjust the seat's height and rake; inflate, deflate and position the lumbar support so the small of your back is just so and adjust the seat wings to hold you as tight as a doting grandmother, should you wish.



The car is started with a start/stop button. This is best done with the window open because the M6 is front-engined and the general cabin ambience is too refined to be invaded with the brutish noises of the 5-liter V10. Even so, the hood's sound insulation means that you never get the eviscerating snarl that juvenile men -- such as myself -- expect from a supercar.



The automatic gearbox can be put in a fully-automatic mode, or gears can be selected by nudging the sequential gear lever, or flipping the paddle-shifts behind the steering wheel.



The car is surprisingly civilized at low speeds. It doesn't feel like you're taming a monster. If anything there's a slight lag between pushing the throttle and the forwards crawl. Navigational and speedometer readings are projected onto the windscreen by the head-up display, creating the impression of a floating screen a few feet in front of the car.



This omnipresent reminder of speed is good news for my (unblemished) driving licence as it is horribly easily to drive way too fast in the M6. It is so stable that 30 mph feels like a walking pace and I wouldn't want to incriminate myself by stating the speed I found myself doing on the public highway while thinking I was driving at just about the speed limit.



Naturally the head-up display can also be customized and, in "M" mode displays speed and a graphic display of rev ranges, in favor of navigational instructions.



Put simply the M6 is perfect on the highways, which would make
In addition to being surprisingly practical, what does it offer? What type of engine does the BMW 6-series have?
roomy trunk 5-liter V10
question: In addition to being surprisingly practical, what does it offer?, answer: roomy trunk | question: What type of engine does the BMW 6-series have?, answer: 5-liter V10