Yesterday, BMW offered an official glimpse. Today, the 2023 M3 Touring has been leaked… and it looks just how we expected.
BMW has already confirmed the M3 Touring will come to Australia, where it will comfortably be the fastest wagon on offer in its showrooms.
Images posted on Instagram by serial leaker Wilco Blok, the M3 Touring grafts the more aggressive nose from the M3 sedan and M4 coupe onto a practical wagon body.
The bonnet is scalloped, the arches are flared, and there’s a big vent ahead of the front doors.
Down back, the production M3 Touring matches what we’d put together from spy photos and teaser images. It’s fatter than the M340i, with a prominent diffuser and quad pipes, along with dramatically widened wheel arches.
You won’t confuse this for a regular 3 Series in the school parking lot, and Audi RS4 drivers have no excuse for not having their wits about them when the Touring shows up in their mirrors.
We’re expecting the Touring to be all-wheel drive and automatic only, rather than available in rear-wheel drive manual guise like the M3 sedan and M4 coupe.
The higher-spec M3 Competition and M4 Competition have 375kW and 650Nm from their turbocharged 3.0-litre inline-six.
The claimed 100km/h sprint time is just 3.5 seconds with xDrive all-wheel drive fitted. Expect a wagon to be a few tenths of a second slower.
Previous test mules have worn a livery suggesting BMW is gunning for the production wagon lap record around the Nurburgring Nordschleife. It’s currently held by the Mercedes-AMG E63 S, which lapped the Green Hell in 7:45.19.
BMW promises the M3 Touring will offer the same space and practicality you get from a standard 3 Series wagon.
The company’s reluctance to develop a long-roof M3 has long proved puzzling, especially considering it’s applied the M name to tuned versions of the X3, X4, X5 and X6 SUVs.
Rival Audi has a rich heritage in high-performance wagons. Its very first RS-branded car was the RS2 Avant, which was succeeded by the first-generation RS4 that was also offered only as a wagon.
Likewise, Mercedes-Benz has always offered a wagon version of its hottest, AMG-fettled C-Class models.
BMW has considered an M3 Touring in the past, even going so far as to develop a feasibility prototype of the E46 M3 back in 2000. It’s always demurred, leaving tuning firms like Alpina to pick up the slack.
MORE: Everything BMW M3
