The 190-MPH Superwagon America Deserves

Most every SUV maker loves to pretend their designs are daring or sporty or something, even as they’re punched from the same suburban mold like soft blobs of Wonder Bread. Enthusiasts notoriously favor station wagons, though their hopes for a comeback have felt like graveyard whistling for some time now. Even Europe, seemingly the last safe harbor for wagons, has been ditching them en masse for crossover SUVs.

The Tesla Model Y, for example, was the EU’s best-selling vehicle in 2023, a historic first for a non-European model or an EV. 

So it comes as a pleasant surprise that BMW is not only pairing an M5 Touring wagon with the seventh-generation M5 sedan but will export it to the U.S. I put the M5 Touring through its genre-blurring paces in Germany, starting from the BMW Research and Technology House near Munich. And unlike so many Euro-teases that I’ve sampled over the years, I can now hope to get another crack at one in the States.

Maybe you can, too. Just forget what you know about Subaru Outbacks or Ford LTD wagons. 

BMW has built just two previous generations of M5 Touring, neither offered here. An E34 M5 Touring saw fewer than 900 copies built beginning in 1994. BMW then produced an E61 M5 Touring from 2007 to 2009, with the E60 sedan’s lusty 507-horsepower V10 and icky single-clutch SMG gearbox.

So, this third-gen 2025 BMW M5 Touring becomes the kind of forbidden fruit that powers automotive clickbaiters to sugar highs of speculation: BMW’s M5 Superwagon Is the Villain America Needs

More than the sedan, the idea of shaking up wealthy enclaves in a 717-hp station wagon is what makes the M5 Touring so exciting for arrested-development auto types. That, and oddball exclusivity: Ferrari will surely sell more Purosangues or 296 GTBs in America than BMW will sell M5 Tourings. BMW expects American buyers to account for 23% of sales, trailing only Germany with 24%, and the U.K.’s 12% a distant third.

Yet considering the market for roughly $130,000 station wagons, BMW will likely count U.S. Touring sales by the hundreds, not thousands. And with the Mercedes-AMG E63 S wagon and Porsche Panamera Sport Turismo discontinued, the 621-hp Audi RS6 Avant is the only alternative for buyers with this particular, um, social outlook, and pocketbook to match.

Like the sedan, this plug-in hybrid M5 Touring should come with an Ozempic prescription, plopping around 5,500 pounds on the scales. Incredibly, that’s more mass than a lightly equipped X7, BMW’s largest SUV which seats up to seven passengers compared to a maximum five in this AWD wagon. The M5 Touring also costs more at $122,675 to start (a $2,000 upcharge from the sedan), versus $112,075 for the X7 M60i and its 523-hp V8.  

What an X7 can’t do is go ballistic on curves, negotiate a road course with aplomb, or sprint to 190 mph with an optional M Driver’s Package. The M5 Touring can do all that, with toddlers strapped into car seats and every last stroller and sippy cup (hopefully) secured. Divorce lawyer optional, depending on your driving style.

The stylistic dichotomy combines a long hood, streamlined greenhouse, and sweetly tapering rear roof—nothing untoward so far—with lower sections aggressive enough for a Lamborghini concept wagon. Where the M5 sedan comes standard with a panoramic roof and a carbon-fiber one optional, the wagon gets a standard steel roof with an optional panoramic view. (A wagon-sized carbon roof posed too many technical challenges).

Second-row seats don’t fold entirely flat, but they still open up to 57.6 cubic feet of total cargo volume. That’s less than a BMW X3, X5, or X7, which boast about 67, 73, and 90 cubic feet, respectively. But the long hold, with its blessedly low liftover, can still manage mountain bikes, boxes, or other bulky gear that would stymie the M5 sedan. 

Like the sedan, BMW says the wagon is fully Motorsports inspired, with air inlets big enough to swallow your forearm, a snaggletoothed “keystone” shape that splits the rear diffuser, and four artillery-sized exhaust outlets. Geometric side skirts refract light to highlight a nipped waist and enough sheer sheet metal expanse to form barricades. As with the sedan, this uber-planted wagon fairly swallows its lane. Front and rear tracks are widened a respective 3.0- and 1.8-inches versus a standard 5 Series, with provocative flares for wheels pulled to corners. 

It’s about as traditionally “pretty” as a punch in the face, but there’s no mistaking the Tysonesque fury behind it: A 4.4-liter twin-turbo V8 combines 577 hp and 553 lb-ft of torque with a spicy electric motor sandwiched into the eight-speed M Steptronic automatic transmission adding another 194 horses and 207 lb-ft, for a total 717 horses and 738 lb-ft. That BMW eDrive motor is supplied by an underfloor battery with a useable 14.8 kWh, which can provide a BMW-estimated 25 miles of all-electric range. 

I’d love to tell you differently, but I’ll be damned if I could spot any meaningful difference in performance between the sedan and wagon. The wagon’s natural exhaust note (versus the selectable piped-in audio duet) may be a skosh louder, reverberating more in the roomier cabin, but that’s all I’ve got.

Both cars are nearly supercar-fast, with surely below-3-second trips to 60 mph, despite BMW’s crazy-conservative claim of 3.4 seconds for the sedan and 3.5 seconds for the wagon. Both deliver are-you-kidding-me levels of tire grip from new Michelin Pilot Sport S 5 rubber on staggered wheels (20-inchers in front, 21s rear); with superlative chassis control from adjustable AWD, adaptive suspensions, and integral rear-wheel steering. 

Like many hulking, 21st-century “haulers”—e.g. that Pursosangue, an Aston Martin DBX707—the BMW is basically a tech-savvy Vegas illusionist, with the ability to make several hundred pounds disappear. As with the sedan, this wagon feels like a heavily breaded slab of schnitzel, but it never drives like a 5,500-pounder: 5,000 pounds, tops. Now, whether you consider that entertainment may hinge on your view of magic: Are you amazed at seeing the elephant levitate, or annoyed at being tricked?

Yet compared to those physics-fooling SUVs, this M5 Touring offers a major edge. It trades off-road ground clearance—the kind so few owners take full advantage of—for the lower sport-sedan stance and classic driving position that benefit enthusiasts every mile and minute behind the wheel. I’ll take that trade, anytime, and rent a Wrangler if I really need to visit the backcountry.

Hybrid fuel economy is unfortunately no better than those SUVs and, in some cases, worse: In my stint in the M5 Touring, admittedly a serious caning, I saw about 10 to 11 mpg. Where some PHEVs arguably deserve some form of environmental or consumer credit, the M5 Touring is the kind that gives PHEVs a bad name; even if it’s all good times behind the wheel.

On these God-given German roads—virtually free of traffic lights, stop signs, or anything resembling a grid—I could swoop the M5 Touring from village to village yet almost never come to a full stop. In between these charming (and expensive) residential nabes are endless sine waves of two-laners, bordered by aggressively verdant fields and forest, that let the BMW frolic as though the Polizei had never been invented—still well within Munich’s metro area of 3 million people. Why can’t America have nice things? 

That question need no longer apply to this superwagon, which any six-figure splurger can now drive, perhaps forgoing an Escalade, faux-cowpoke pickup, or any other overscaled slab of view-blocking, pedestrian-mangling metal. Civilization, we’ll call it. 

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