2023 BMW M3 Touring

The M3 Touring is the fast estate enthusiasts dreamed of for 30 years, and it landed at the perfect moment

What do you write to introduce the 2023 BMW M3 Touring? After weeks of turning it over, we realised this car needs no introduction. The hype was never just hype, the car delivers, and we will happily join every other review in saying it is beyond what we hoped. It is near-perfect, or at least perfectly timed.

That timing is everything. As the industry electrifies, a car people dreamed about for over 30 years finally arrives, a little beacon of hope with a big luggage space. But it is not only that perspective that makes it shine. This is one of the best M cars to leave Bavaria in the last decade.

Design: an M3 nose on an estate, and it works

The exterior is a study in contrast: the controversial M3 front blended with that iconic BMW touring shape into something you keep staring at. You see the M3 nose, then your eye follows the long silhouette, the 19 and 20-inch wheels with huge discs behind lightweight spokes, and the four exhaust tips flanking the classic touring tailgate. Even people who do not follow cars understand this is a unique concoction. It goes from good Samaritan to bad boy, or bad girl with those lustrous hips, and back again in a few inches of bodywork.

Interior: track-day buckets, family-trip boot

That bipolar contrast continues inside. Red leather bucket seats with exposed carbon front and back sit alongside a 500-litre boot, so in a few inches the cabin swings from drive me on track to load me up. The M additions to the infotainment are intuitive, but the underlying BMW system, even with the new cockpit screen, is not all we hoped, the same gripe we had with the iX's iDrive. Still, BMW has balanced the opposing forces beautifully: the €3,800 buckets pin you in place when you summon the car's M side, then carry you and three friends in comfort the next day. Our one puzzle is why cargo nets are not standard, our grocery runs were either an exercise in restraint or ended in smashed vegetables.

The M3/M4 buffet, and where the Touring sits

BMW M offers a dizzying spread in the M3/M4 range: sedan, touring, coupe and convertible, in regular, Competition and CS forms, some even with a manual. The Touring keeps it simple: it comes only as a Competition, forever paired with M xDrive all-wheel drive. It is 85 kg heavier and slightly taller and longer than the sedan, but that is enough body-shaming.

Powertrain and driving: relentless, with a rear-drive party trick

Under the bonnet is the familiar 3.0-litre straight-six in Competition tune, with 510 hp and 650 Nm. Through the eight-speed M Steptronic and M xDrive, the Touring hits 0 to 100 km/h in 3.6 seconds, just 0.2 behind the sedan, and 200 km/h in 12.9, yet it also potters through town happily on its 275/285 tyres. The only catch is that illegal speeds arrive so fast that truly stretching its legs is not a public-road affair.

The adaptive M suspension with electronically controlled dampers balances sport and everyday comfort, and the M-specific steering, with a unique Touring ratio, is quick, if a touch light on feedback at higher cornering loads. The highlight is the 2WD mode: switch the stability control down through its levels and you get a controlled, or pure, rear-drive character, a nod to M tradition and absurdly good fun with space to play. We had driven the M3 Competition before, but never with M xDrive, and hooking that engine to the AWD system feels like it should be regulated. Acceleration is relentless, the torque hauling all two tonnes across the tarmac as if it weighed a fraction of that.

Price: what the best spec actually costs

In Belgium prices start at €104,790, a little over €2,000 more than the xDrive sedan. Our test car reached €122,630, with most of the €18,700 in options going on the red interior, M carbon buckets and carbon trim, only €4,140 of it the Technology pack and audio. Why so specific? To make a point: the M3 Touring in its best usable, best driving spec costs €108,930. Everything above that is just extra cool on an already absurd, decades-in-the-waiting BMW M product.

AutoNext Verdict

Back to that perfect timing. The M3 Touring could not have arrived at a better moment, or with better technology, in the shape of the M xDrive system we have only had for a few years. BMW M has packed an almost unimaginable range of talents into one car.

Thrilling when you drive it hard, an ergonomic dream on long trips, and practical enough to be a two-car garage on its own, the M3 Competition Touring is as close to having it all as a fast estate gets. Thirty years of dreaming, and it was worth the wait.