When BMW M announced back in 2020 that they were building an M3 Touring, the excitement surrounding the car was indeed very high. After all, it's BMW M's first wagon in more than a decade. The last high-performance wagon to ever come out of BMW M was the M5 Touring (E61), which was last produced in 2010, and this will also be the first time that an M3 Touring will be ever produced. Australian automotive website CarExpert managed to have an intimate chat with the folks at BMW M who led the development of the highly-anticipated wagon.

Wagons have always been popular in Europe, but not much elsewhere. Especially in the face of SUVs, wagons have declined in popularity outside the European continent. The head of BMW M Prototyping, Hans Rahn, created a one-off M3 Touring Concept that you see here, which is painted in Frozen Dark Silver (basically their marketing term for matte silver).

The prototype apparently won the hearts of the BMW board, with production and sales commencing just a few months from now. As a matter of fact, the BMW M3 Touring will finally make its debut at the Goodwood Festival of Speed this June 23, which means we don't have to wait much longer to see BMW M's first wagon in more than a decade.

Now, regarding the declining popularity of wagons, BMW M CEO, Frank van Meel, who spoke to CarExpert in Italy, says that demand for the M3 Touring is surprisingly quite high. BMW M, as a matter of fact, is confident in the success of the M3 Touring, and it's one of the reasons why the model was green-lit for production.

Of course, convincing the bosses from Munich wasn't easy for them. After all, wagons are only popular in Europe, but in the end, the M3 Touring is finally seeing the light of day thanks to the clamor for such a vehicle globally.

itself or the M4, it’s more or less a European concept, so you are focused very strongly on one market, which limits your production numbers. However, the pull from all our major markets was so strong, with everyone desperate for the M3 Touring, so we said, ‘okay we’ll do it’".>

Now that the BMW M3 Touring has been green-lit for production, the challenge now is how do you make a heavier wagon perform just like the M3 sedan? Dirk Hacker, who is in charge of development at BMW M, says that this was a very difficult task.

Basically, the BMW M engineers left no stone unturned when developing the M3 Touring. The team started by removing the front end of a standard 3 Series Touring and then replacing it with all of the stuff found in the M3 sedan, namely the S58 twin-turbo straight-six engine, M xDrive AWD system, the same tires used by the M3, the optional M Ceramic Brakes, and even the sedan's 285-mm wide rear tires.

To top it all off, the M3 Touring gets completely new springs, dampers, anti-roll bars, and even a completely bespoke roof spoiler, which gives the M3 Touring a significant amount of downforce.

Klaus Uber, the man in charge of driving dynamics for all M cars, says that all of these upgrades have made the M3 Touring just as good as the sedan in terms of handling.

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With less than a month away from the world debut of the BMW M3 Touring, we're sure to know more details about the first-ever high-performance wagon from BMW M since the E61 M5 Touring. This isn't the first time that an M3 Touring has been considered for development, because back in 2000, a one-off (E46) M3 Touring was actually conceived, but was never put into production.