BMW M5 Touring confirmed for 2024 - performance estate gets hybrid power

BMW has confirmed that it will release a new M5 Touring estate car next year.

For only the third time in its history the Bavarian brand is adding an estate version alongside its ultra-high-performance saloon car. The last version was launched 16 years ago with the V10-powered E61, which went out of production in 2010 after just 1,009 were sold. Since then buyers have had to settle for four-door versions of the M5.

The new model comes just a few months after the launch of the first ever BMW M3 Touring, which fans have been demanding for years. Testing on public roads and the famous Nurburgring Nordschleife is due to start in coming days ahead of the M5 Touring going on sale in 2024.

BMW isn’t giving too much away just yet but teaser images of the new car show a clearly more muscular and purposeful edge to the styling of the regular M5 Touring.  

Beneath the sheet and camouflage, the new model has a clearly pronounced roof spoiler on the estate tailgate, four massive exhausts, deep side skirts and swollen wheel arches over massive gloss black alloys shod in Michelin Pilot Sport 5s.

Spy images of the saloon M5 in testing show a more aggressive front end, which the estate will share, featuring a relatively small (by modern BMW standards) kidney grille, deep front splitter with large air intakes and cooling vents cut into the edges of the front bumper. 

BMW is also staying tight-lipped about the new M5’s powertrain, saying only that it’s “a completely newly developed partially electrified drive system”. It is expected that this will be the same 4.4-litre V8 hybrid arrangement in the grotesque XM. 

In standard form, that car offers 644bhp and 590lb ft but there’s a chance the M5 Touring could get the uprated version which appears in the “Label Red” limited edition. That offers a staggering 748bhp and 738lb ft. Unsurprisingly given the potential numbers involved, the M5 Touring will be all-wheel-drive and come with an eight-speed automatic transmission as standard. 

There’s no word on performance either but given that the outgoing M5 Competition covered 0-62mph in 3.3 seconds with its non-hybrid 616bhp V8, expect something at least as potent for the new car. 

“Testing of the first prototypes of the new BMW M5 Touring is to commence in the next few days in urban traffic as well as on country roads and motorways around Munich and at the BMW M GmbH headquarters in Garching”, the firm said in a statement on Monday.

It added: “The integrated application of all drive and suspension systems will then also be carried out for the new BMW M5 Touring on the Nürburgring's Nordschleife, among other places, with the aim of ensuring the ideal balance of sporting performance on the racetrack and superior ride comfort in everyday driving and over long distances.”