BMW M5 Touring prototype review: brace, brace… 2.5-tonne hot estate incoming!

I thought the M5 Touring had already been revealed, what’s with the cammo?

Ah yes, at the time we got to drive this close-but-not-quite-dynamically-signed-off prototype in a very moist Wales, it hadn’t yet been revealed. And you know what all those sheep are like with their long-lens spy cameras, so it remained under wraps. Which mainly served to draw even more attention to us.

Couldn’t disguise the size though, could they?

Ouch, but true. The new M5 Touring is booty, but also a beast. At 5m long and almost 2m wide, with a 500-litre boot expanding to 1,630-litres when you fold the rear seats nearly flat, it’s a proper hauler… and therefore feels like a tight squeeze on Snowdonia’s B-roads.

And then there’s the elephant in the room – the fact that the Touring weighs even more than the already porky saloon. At well over 2.5 tonnes it’s around 60kg heavier… although you are carrying around extra metal and glass at the rear, 4WD (that can be switched to RWD if you’re feeling brave), rear-steering, an 18.6kWh battery at the heart of the plug-in hybrid powertrain and an electric tailgate. Still, over 2.5 tonnes!

Big weight needs lots of grunt then?

Correct, and thanks to the same 4.4-litre twin-turbo V8 as the saloon (producing 577bhp on its own) working in tandem with an e-motor in the gearbox, there’s a total of 717bhp and 737lb ft of torque available. Predictably, the performance figures for such a bus are startling: 0-62mph in 3.6 seconds, 0-124mph in just over 11 seconds and a top speed of 189mph if you pay BMW even more to raise the 155mph limiter.

Worth noting though that the current RS6 Performance is 0.2s quicker from 0-62mph despite giving away 100bhp… because it’s almost 500kg lighter. Insert shock face emoji here.

Why has it taken this long?

We are just as baffled as you that this is only the third M5 to get the Touring treatment… until we discovered that the most recent V10 M5 touring (E61) only ever sold less than 1,000 units in total. Not a great return on investment. Now though, BMW reckons the world (specifically the US) is ready to embrace the Touring way of life.

What’s new?

Like the saloon there’s no air suspension here; you get coil springs, fixed anti-roll bars and adaptive dampers. For the Touring there’s different damper settings at the rear and a redesigned multi-link rear axle to free up maximum space in the boot.

Result? It rides with heft and fluidity in comfort, and tightens up noticeably in Sport, but never feels overly harsh. The steering is precise and free of slack, but not exactly fizzing with feedback. Hopefully the final tune can serve up a little more connection to the front tyres.

How does it drive?

As I mentioned earlier, the Touring is still in development, so didn’t feel quite as crisp and polished as the finished M5 saloon we also had a go in, on the same roads. However, the differences really are paltry for 99 per cent of what you’ll ask of this car. There’s a lovely, punchy, silky take-off under e-power before the woofly V8 takes over the majority of the work. It carves through corners with predictability and four feet square and planted on the road.

It’s predictably less aggressive to drive than the M3 Touring, but still has a pointier front end than it has any right to, and grip to spare even on sodden, slimy roads. It’s rapid, but not manically so, although there’s already a sense that when you really uncork this thing on a track – which we fully intend to do – it’s going to raise eyebrows and disintegrate tyres.

Of course, there’s the usual baffling array of modes to play with, which can be configured to your preferences and saved on the shortcut M buttons. But now there’s even more decisions to make: a hybrid button with five modes that lets you tell the plug-in hybrid powertrain how you want it to behave; pure EV (for about 40 miles), an e-charge mode that tops up the battery as you drive, a normal hybrid mode, dynamic mode and dynamic+ that drains the battery for maximum performance. Enough for two flat-out laps of the Nordschleife.

Do you predict success?

Let’s put it this way. I genuinely don’t understand why anyone wouldn’t have the Touring over the Saloon. It looks better, it’s more practical, it drives 98 per cent as well… and it’s 5,000 per cent cooler. Clearly, weighing 500kg more than the RS6 isn’t great and the £112,500 price tag is punchy, but in principle this is the Bavarian sleeper wagon we’ve always wanted.

I’m already looking forward to putting many miles under those tyres, then reducing them to dust on track.