Even before the official premiere of the first “charged” station wagon in the history of the BMW M3, the new product became the owner of the lap record on the iconic Nordschleife in Germany, where factory specialists worked on the car’s settings. The model, driven by BMW M test driver Jörg Weidinger, became the fastest station wagon, surpassing the result of the Mercedes-AMG E63 S 4Matic+ Estate. In the hands of independent journalists, the M3 Touring was a little slower, but still went fast.
Sport Auto test driver Christian Gebhardt completed the 20.6-kilometer lap in 07:34.39. In the race, the journalist used an absolutely standard BMW M3 Touring – under the hood is an inline 3.0-liter twin-turbo six with a power of 510 horsepower and a torque of 650 Nm.
The engine is mated to an 8-speed automatic transmission and xDrive all-wheel drive system. The Sport Auto editor’s result was slightly worse than that of the factory racer. Driven by Jörg Weidinger, the station wagon completed a similar 20.6-kilometre lap in 7:30.300, but the test driver did it in more optimal weather conditions.
However, Christian Gebhardt’s result turned out to be quite good – the practical station wagon drove a lap at the pace of the Koenigsegg CCR hypercar and the Lexus LFA Nurburgring Package supercar. However, it is necessary to take into account that the listed models were traveling along a slightly longer 20.8-kilometer version of the Nordschleife.
New BMW M3 Touring and six more crazy station wagons
