I wouldn’t say the e63 is a different car altogether, its still a w211 after all. Hmm that makes sense given the refresh of the w211 line but I always felt like they were on sale at the same time for a year or two. Maybe i got mixed up from seeing tons of comparisons between the E55 and the M5.

Hold on now. You’ve got your E55’s mixed up. The w211 E55 you have pictured isn’t the competitior to the E39 M5, the w210 E55 was. The w210 E55 was sold from 1999-2002, which matches up to the e39s production from 1999-2003. The w211 E55/63 is really considered the competitor for the E60 M5