There’s a very niche market for wagons these days and BMW fans have been anxiously waiting for almost a year now, since rumours on the net started swirling around, for the first-ever M3 Touring production car.
Back in 2000, BMW built an exceptional one-off M3 wagon which was based on the E46 platform but it was used in-house for various things. Fans held onto the hope that one day we would get to see another but the head of BMW M has now shut down that fantasy.
It is reported that BMW M boss, Markus Flasch, told Car Magazine (UK) that a high-performance M Touring (wagon) model is not on the agenda.
“Touring estates are not part of our M plan. If I asked customers in Austria, Switzerland or Germany they would probably give it the thumbs-up, but we are a global company and we have so many things to deal with on the powertrain side that we don’t go into products like this. This is what the SUVs are for.”
So while he does acknowledge that there is somewhat of a demand for the M3 Touring in certain parts of the globe, it’s just not enough to build a solid business case on.
Right now, BMW M believes that SUVs make more sense globally and is the reason for the recent launches of the X3 M and X4 M, which join the bigger X5 M and X6 M siblings in the product catalogue.
The only real M wagons to be found today are the M5 Touring from the especially-rare E34 generation or the still-quite-rare E61 generation with its powerful V10 engine and not-so-powerful SMG transmission. Less than 900 units of the E34 gen were made and a little over a 1,000 units of the E61 gen were apparently produced.
Next, read: Best performance on a BMW 3 Series? Go for the E46 M3. Here’s why.