Behold the 2012 BMW M5

Ladies and gentlemen say hello to the F10 M5.

This is not an official release from BMW, in fact, the pic above was snapped from a journalist at an invite-only event where there were strict rules about taking pictures. BMW didn’t want to unleash the M5 officially until April 7th and had an embargo in place. The site, transmissia.net obviously did not get that memo.

Anyway, there’s no real surprises here in terms of design. Despite technically being labeled as a concept by BMW for some reason, this new M5 is clearly production ready. Those wheels probably won’t be black (although black might be optional), but otherwise this is what the production version will look like.

Since this is very much a leak, that means there’s still no official detail on powerplants and the like, but as stated before, it will likely have a V8 under the hood which replaces the outgoing V10. Also, a manual transmission has been confirmed for North America, but oddly BMW hasn’t done so for other markets.

Check back to Car Driven on April 7th, where the M5 will get its official reveal along with answers to many questions! In the meantime, hit the jump to see more pics.

[Automotive Addicts]

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