Following a 14-year hiatus, a Touring version of BMW M’s super sedan is scheduled to make its return in 2024. Yup, you read that right — a new M5 Touring is coming!
Only the third M5 built in station-wagon format, the upcoming M5 Touring is based on the seventh-generation M5, which, the German marque says, is already undergoing an intensive testing programme. Testing of the first next-generation M5 Touring prototypes, meanwhile, will commence in the next few days. Here, these models will be put through their paces in several environments, including driving in urban traffic, on country roads and motorways around Munich and at BMW M’s headquarters in Garching. But that’s not all.
“The Touring will feature a completely new partially electrified drive system”
As has become a custom (and as this is a high-performance BMW), the integrated application of the M5 Touring’s drive and suspension systems will be carried out on the Nürburgring Nordschleife. Here, BMW aims to ensure the M5 Touring has the ideal balance “superior” ride comfort for everyday and long-distance driving and, of course, performance on a racetrack. According to the automaker, the new M5 Touring will offer the “perfect” symbiosis of M-typical performance, uncompromising long-distance comfort and impressive spaciousness.
So, what about the engine? The company hasn’t revealed much thus far. However, it has confirmed that, just like its high-performance sedan sibling, the Touring will feature a “completely new” partially electrified drive system, further signifying BMW’s motorsport department’s path to electrification. “We are now also installing a hybrid drive system with typical M performance in other high-performance cars,” said Dirk Häcker, Head of Development at BMW M GmbH.
Keeping on the topic of high-performance BMW wagons; as a reminder, BMW South Africa has confirmed to APEX that the first-ever M3 Touring is penned in for local introduction, with the company saying a limited number of units will make their way here in 2024.
