At Long Last, the BMW M5 Touring Is Officially Coming to the US
It took more than 30 years, but the long-roof M5 is finally destined for these shores.
Wagon lovers, rejoice! A new performance wagon is upon us in America, which is an unlikely twist in today's auto market saturated by crossovers and SUVs. BMW has confirmed that the upcoming M5 Touring will be coming to the United States, where it will compete with the likes of the Audi RS6 Avant and the Mercedes-AMG E63 wagon. This is the first time that an M5 Touring has been sold in America, in the model's long history going back to the legendary E34 wagon from 1992.
It's not exactly a surprise that the BMW M5 Touring has been confirmed for the States—rumors to that effect had circulated for months—but the official confirmation is welcome news. Sedans and wagons have taken a backseat to trucks, crossovers, and SUVs on the U.S. market lately, forcing such stalwart wagon makers like Volvo to abandon them in favor of other vehicles. Audi shocked the auto world with its RS6 Avant, but fans implicitly understood such a vehicle was a moonshot that was unlikely to inspire rival automakers to bring out their own fire-breathing wagons.
That's what BMW is doing with the release of the M5 Touring, which is both a product of the German carmaker's storied M division and the latest revival of the Touring badge. This new model marks the third generation of the M5 Touring, and the latest wagon will succeed the E34 and E61 models, released in 1992 and 2007, respectively. Neither of those were sold in the U.S., likely due to little demand from buyers here for performance wagons.
The full design of the new M5 wagon is still cloaked in a livery of squiggles and lines that carmakers use to conceal new cars, but we can make much of it out in a new video that BMW shared. It follows a BMW M5 sedan and M5 Touring out on test drives in their native Germany. Watch the wagon rip:
The upcoming M5 takes on the looks of the current 5 Series G60, but has more aggressive styling. BMW says that the new M5 wagon will be powered by a hybrid powertrain, which may be similar to that of the BMW XM SUV. The most powerful version of that M car is the XM Red Label plug-in hybrid, which makes up to 738 horsepower and 738 lb-ft of torque. It's unclear how much of that power the new M5 Touring will inherit, but it'll have the same 4.4-liter twin-turbo V8 paired with at least one electric motor. It could also be a PHEV model, but the range is still unknown.
The BMW M5 Touring's price is also unknown for now. The prior-gen M5 F90 started just shy of $110,000, and that was for the sedan. You can imagine that a new, possibly plug-in hybrid M5 with a long roof will blow past that dollar figure, maybe into the low $120,000 range. Still, it might be worth it for those who've waited decades to see a new M5 Touring make it to the American market. Long live the wagon.
