one of my friendly Bimmer dealers is sure I can get a Dec. 2002 production month for my M5; they think that that may be the last month for E39 M5s, but they speculate that BMW will continue production longer...

re. E60 5er, everything I heard and read indicates that they will retool the Dingolfing factory this summer and start prodution in the fall 2003 for model year 2004. ...of course the E60 M5 won't be in production for a year or two later, so model year 2005 earliest. So hopefully that's one more reason for BMW to continue producing the M5 S62 engines and make M5s though the 2003 model year...so that they only have one or two model years without an M5.

The dealer also said that the V10 engine isn't anywhere near ready for production - so model year 2004 is too soon for shipping it (for the E60 M5)