The M3 Touring also allows you to have some real fun with the chassis in a manner alien to the RS4 Avant – which, just for the record, it outclasses with ease. Select M Dynamic Mode for the stability control and you can throw this 174mph wagon around freely, and even with all the systems off, it’s benign and predictable. (On a near-freezing day and with summer tyres, we didn’t explore the car’s RWD driveline setting, but past experience suggests that it will give proceedings another dimension of entertainment value). Okay, the brake pedal remains oddly soft and refinement is perhaps a touch worse than in the saloon (because the rear bulkhead is missing), but these are small blemishes.
As for performance, you couldn’t want for more. From a standstill, the M3 Touring takes roughly the same time to reach 62mph as does the 997 generation of Porsche’s 911 GT2 RS. Yes, a mid-size estate punching just as hard as a bona fide – and unhinged – supercar barely a decade old. Roll-on acceleration and low-rev grunt are no less savage, although in the sportier engine modes, the car’s synthesised growl becomes wearing. The S58 is mighty, but it’s no atmo S54, studio tweaks or not.
If there was ever going to be a ‘but’, it was going to concern the ride quality. And yet actually, beyond the prickly low-speed gait also experienced in the saloon (and which is acceptable given the performance potential we’re dealing with here), the M3 Touring acquits itself well. Its motorway manners are surprisingly refined, the sophisticated dampers allowing the springs to move freely in Comfort mode.
The cabin itself possesses a 5 Series-esque maturity, leather-trimmed dashboard and all. Head room in the back seats is also improved over the saloon, and there’s good leg room available even behind those chunky carbon seats. In fact, the only uncomfortable thing about this special car is getting over the lip of those seats on your way out, and if you don’t like the sound of that, you needn’t add them. There are very few drawbacks here, which is the whole point.
So, after an interminable delay, the first (and perhaps the last) M3 Touring really is all we wanted it to be. But let’s be honest: nine times out of ten, the M340i Touring scratches the same itch. M’s 50th birthday present to itself might be practical, but it isn’t especially rational, and even at this price point it lacks the breadth of the other supersonic 3 Series wagon, Alpina’s 190mph B3 Touring.