Fake BMW M3 Touring Vs. M340i Touring Drag Race Is Hot Wagon on Wagon Action

That's probably what's going on with the F81 BMW M3 Touring that the Bavarians never made. Oh, the horror: how could BMW not build a performance wagon when the market for this body type is on a steady decline and those who do buy them do so for the extra space needed for larger families, which makes the performance part pretty useless? What were they thinking?

Well, business, that's what they were thinking, and quite aptly so. Car companies are trying to slim down their lineups, and since nobody's going to cut the models that are selling in hordes, the best way to go around that is to let go of the more niche products. Short of a 600 hp single-seat convertible SUV, they don't really come more niche than performance wagons.

After all, anyone interested in that can always buy the M340i xDrive Touring. The toned-down M Performance wagon gets 374 hp, eight-speed auto transmission with launch control, and BMW's xDrive all-wheel-drive system for that all-important bit of boost off the line. Sure, 374 hp is pretty far off the 480 hp of the new M3, but it's still more than enough to make sure you don't get done by any stock hot hatch.

Or, for apparently the same money you would spend on a brand-new M340i Touring, you could go the path the other car in this drag race did. That thing is a very successful marriage between an F31 320d Touring and an F80 M3, with a little bit added on top.

That bit is a Stage 2 tuning package from a company called Evolve that brought the S55's power up to 540 hp. That's nearly 200 hp more than the modern, stock BMW wagon sitting beside it on the starting line, so is this going to be as one-sided as the figures suggest. No spoilers, but the answer is "no".