Summary
- The next-generation BMW M5 Touring will be offered as a wagon alongside the sedan, marking a return to the wagon format after several generations.
- The M5 Touring is expected to have a visually appealing design with a wider body, hunkered-down stance, and aggressive styling that enhances the current 5 Series’s aesthetics.
- The next-generation M5 Touring will likely be the most powerful M5 ever, incorporating electrification as standard and possibly featuring a plug-in hybrid V-8 drivetrain similar to the BMW XM.
The BMW M5 has been one of the quintessential luxury sports sedans. The sports sedan term is so strongly associated with the M5 nameplate that it’s hard to imagine a world where the M5 was never conceived. In 2024, the M5’s long-storied history continues, and you can expect quite a lot of changes when the next-generation M5 comes out.
That’s because, for the first time since the E60 generation, which came with a Formula One-derived V-10, the next-generation M5 is confirmed to once again be offered as a wagon (or Touring in BMW’s marketing speak) alongside the sedan. The German automaker, in fact, recently teased over the holiday season an M5 Touring that’s been gift-wrapped and ready for Christmas.
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In order to give you the most up-to-date and accurate information possible, the data used to compile this article was sourced from various manufacturer websites and other authoritative sources, including BMW and BMWBlog.
The BMW M5 Touring Is Coming
So, the BMW M5 Touring is coming to town, and though it’s arriving way after the Christmas season, there are still plenty of reasons to be festive as the next-generation M5 Touring is set to arrive sometime this year. Apart from the fact that turning anything into a wagon instantly makes a car a thousand times better, the M5 Touring is set to come with a broader breadth of capabilities.
It Should Look Sick From Every Angle
Whether you agree with me or not, the current G60 BMW 5 Series looks really good–well, unless it’s specced in a way that it comes with small wheels, then yeah, the 5 Series can look dorky. With the bigger wheels, though, the 5 Series looks very striking and sporty–especially with the optional M Sport package. Turn it into a wagon, however, and things get more visually interesting.
We have yet to see what the all-new 5 Series will look like in Touring form, but we’re confident that–as with every other wagon in the BMW stable, it’ll subjectively look better than its sedan sibling. In fact, if these teaser shots showcasing a camouflaged M5 Touring are any indication, then we can already tell that its long roof silhouette is already doing justice to the proportions of the current 5 Series.
Combine that with the wider body, hunkered-down stance, and aggressiveness of a BMW M car, then you’ve got a wagon that will look good from any angle. It also certainly helps that the 5 Series thankfully didn’t inherit the large kidney grilles of the M3 and M4, so that’s a bonus, too.
It’ll Be Luxurious And Practical As Hell
The current G60 5 Series has one of the nicest interiors in the segment. The materials are great and in typical BMW fashion, the build quality is sublime. It also looks great, and while the climate control switches have been integrated into the iDrive 8.5 infotainment screen, BMW has kept a few physical controls such as the volume scroller and the iDrive controller knob intact, so it’s not all bad when it comes to the user interface.
The 5 Series is also quite spacious at the back, but in wagon form, it’s an even better place for both humans and cargo. So, not only do you get a nicer-looking car, but you also get a very practical luxury car with supercar-like performance. Indeed, wagons are the best of all worlds.
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It Could Be The Most Powerful M5 Ever
The outgoing F90 BMW M5 already had a lot of power. It produced anywhere from 591 in the standard M5, all the way to 626 horsepower in the M5 CS. Therefore, you should only expect the next-generation M5 to be more powerful and more capable in every way, but in order to achieve that in an age of stricter emissions regulations, BMW M will be seeing help from the power of electrification.
Electrification Comes As Standard
For the first time, the BMW M5 and M5 Touring will be coming with electrification as standard. No, not pure electric, but electrification. While BMW M has confirmed the M5’s electrified direction, the company has not yet revealed any details on what we can expect. In a an official announcement when the company started teasing the M5 Touring, BMW said:
Just like the future BMW M5 Sedan, the Touring variant will also feature a completely newly developed partially electrified drive system. Its M-typical performance characteristics as well as the precisely tuned chassis technology refined with innovative systems facilitate driving dynamics and agility at a level unique in this vehicle class. Thus, BMW M GmbH is steadily progressing on its path to electrification.
Although we cannot confirm this yet, the next-generation M5 getting a plug-in hybrid V-8 drivetrain is a possibility. If that sounds familiar, that’s because it’s a setup that the current BMW XM already utilizes. It is possible that this could be the setup that the M5 might adopt since this is an electrified drivetrain that the German automaker doesn’t need to develop from the ground up–thus saving on development costs.
Expect The M5 Touring To Be Very Powerful
In the XM, the 4.4-liter twin-turbo V-8 plug-in hybrid powertrain produces anywhere from 644 horsepower for the standard model, all the way to a whopping 738 horses in the range-topping Label Red. We’re not sure if the XM Label Red’s tuning will make its way into the M5 Touring or in any M5 version for that matter, but imagine the performance of this model if it inherited that same output in a much lighter, sleeker wagon body.
Again, while concrete details have yet to be laid out, the XM’s V-8 plug-in hybrid powertrain is, unsurprisingly, linked to a ZF eight-speed automatic and an all-wheel drive (AWD) system called M xDrive in the case of these BMW M cars. This system is rear-biased for most of the time.
It’s only when the system thinks that the rear wheels can’t handle all that power that it starts sending power to the front wheels. However, where the F90 M5 stood out is its ability to go fully rear-wheel drive (RWD) if you want to execute those tail-happy drifts. We’re not sure if the next-generation M5 will still come with this drive mode, but we won’t be surprised if it still does.
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And There’s A High Probability It’s Coming To America
We know how much Americans are so obsessed with SUVs, which is why we’re not surprised that BMW’s bestseller for the American market is the X5 midsize SUV. The demand for SUVs has prevented brands from offering their wagons in the United States, but ever since the Audi RS6’s recent success, it’s now understood that in the higher-end segment, there’s a legitimate business case for offering a wagon.
Yes, The M5 Touring Is Being Tested In The States
Further adding confidence to the possibility of the M5 Touring being sold in the United States is this spy shot of the said high-performance wagon being tested on American soil. Initially posted on BMWBlog, the M5 Touring was caught testing in Los Angeles. Sure, the heavy camouflage does hide some of the design details of the M5 Touring, but there’s no way around its wider body, aggressive front and rear fascias, flushed door handles, and beautiful long roof proportions.
It also must be noted that the M5 Touring won’t be the only wagon 5 Series to exist for this generation because, for the first time, an i5 Touring will also be offered. BMW’s first-ever electric wagon is still yet to be confirmed for the United States, nor have any prototypes been spotted on American soil, so the i5 Touring’s fate in America is still unknown.
More Details To Be Revealed This Year
BMW M has already confirmed that the M5 Touring will debut this year alongside the M5 sedan, though giving us an early glimpse of what the M5 Touring could look like is the reveal of the standard 5 Series Touring. BMW has already confirmed that the standard 5 Series Touring (and potentially the i5 Touring) will be revealed in the spring of 2024, while the M5 Touring and sedan could follow shortly, most likely in the summer of 2024. If everything goes to plan, it’s safe to predict that the M5 Touring will hit showrooms in late 2024 for the 2025 model year.
If you can’t wait for the M5 to arrive, the next best thing to wait for is the M Performance version of the 5 Series called the M560e. Unlike the M550i it’s replacing, this will come with a plug-in hybrid inline-six, with 565 horses and a four-second 0-62 mph (100 km/h) time.
At the other end of the M Performance spectrum is the i5 M60, which is purely electric and comes with two electric motors that produce a total of 593 horses and a 0-62 mph time of just 3.8 seconds. With these numbers already nearly as fast as the outgoing F90 M5, we can only expect BMW M to pull out all the stops and make the M5 and M5 Touring the fastest M5 models ever.
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