Scheduled to premiere on June 23rd at the Goodwood Festival of Speed, the M3 Touring will celebrate M’s 50th anniversary. Already leaked with a black-only look, the super wagon still is testing at the Nurburgring.
This video, coming to you from Automotive Mike, showcases a camouflaged prototype doing hot laps during industry-pool tests. Also captured by the carparazzo while driving on the public roads that surround the Green Hell, the family-hauling model sounds unmistakably like a sixer.
Under the hood, you’ll find an evolution of the B58 engine that bears the S58 codename. Introduced by the X3 M and X4 M, this lump is offered in a multitude of tunes. For this application, the Bavarian automaker is believed to deliver 503 ponies and 479 pound-feet (650 Nm) of torque.
Those figures mirror the output of the M3 Competition, which is exclusively offered with a torque-converter automatic transmission supplied by ZF Friedrichshafen. The reason BMW has discontinued the dual-clutch tranny from the previous-gen M3 is rather simple. To put it bluntly, the dual-clutch box isn’t compatible with the M xDrive system of the M3 Competition.
Based on the downshifts and upshifts of this prototype, we’re most certainly dealing with the aforementioned torque-converter automatic that flaunts eight forward ratios. The car’s turn-in dynamics and the way it gets out of the corner indicate that M xDrive may be standard, not an optional extra.
Later today, BMW is expected to confirm the lap time of the M3 Touring on the infamous Nurburgring Nordschleife. So far, we know it starts with a seven. The fastest internal combustion-engined wagon on this circuit is the Mercedes-AMG E 63 S 4Matic+ T-Modell, which needed 7:45 in 2017.
There are rumors according to which the Bimmer lapped the racetrack in 7:30 in perfect weather conditions, a tremendously impressive feat by most accounts. The speculated lap time also cements the M xDrive hearsay.
BMW has never tested the M3 Touring on U.S. public roads because it’s pretty darn hard to make a case for it. For starters, BMW doesn’t sell wagons in the United States right now. Homologation costs for a low-volume model would be too high for comfort, hence the Bavarian automaker’s refusal.
After a 1:43 scale model of a Ferrari 250 GTO sparked Mircea's interest for cars when he was a kid, an early internship at Top Gear sealed his career path. He's most interested in muscle cars and American trucks, but he takes a passing interest in quirky kei cars as well. Full profile
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