Fast station wagons have long been an object of desire for automotive enthusiasts. And why wouldn’t they be? After all, they combine wants like high performance with needs like cargo space in almost perfect harmony.
Yet while Audi, Mercedes-AMG, Porsche and even Cadillac have found love and money from building high-performance wagons, BMW, surprisingly, has rarely dabbled in that space — and their M performance division has almost never done so. While the brand’s Alpina connection has built its fair share of autobahn-smashing station wagons, the sole example of a fast two-box M wagon was the super-rare E61-generation M5 Touring of the early Aughts. (Unless you count the likes of the X3 M and X5 M, which, well, we’d rather not if we’re talking seriously about station wagons.)
That all changes today, however, with the arrival of the all-new BMW M3 Touring — the first production BMW M3 station wagon.
The BMW M3 Touring offers all the fun, just with more cargo space
CarPixThe biggest advantage to choosing the M3 Touring, of course, is the ability to cram more junk in the trunk. With all five seats occupied, there’s room for 17.7 cubic feet of gear in back; fold down the rear seat, and you can fit more than 53 cubic feet of stuff back there. The rear bench folds 40:20:40, too, so you can drop as much or little of the seat as needed to fit whatever you’re lugging.
It also, of course, brings aesthetic benefits. While opting for the long roof version does nothing to address the Angry Birds pig face of the latest M3 / M4, it does smooth out and accentuate the car’s rear half, giving it a sleeker, more aggressive profile that pulls in the gaze in a way the sedan arguably can’t touch.
