New BMW M5 Touring 2024 review: a sensational performance estate

Verdict

It’s arguably the most exciting estate car there has ever been, and certainly the most potent. Yet at the same time the new BMW M5 Touring is a spacious and practical car, featuring a 500/1,630 litre boot. It also contains a tonne of innovative new tech. Plus, it does as much as 166mpg and emits just 39g/km of CO2. It’s hard to find anything about it to dislike.

It’s hard to think of a car that contains more ability under just one (carbon fibre) roof than the new BMW M5 Hybrid Touring – fast in a straight line, practical and spacious as an estate car, and chock-full of tech thanks to its new i5-influenced cabin.

Codenamed the G99, this is only the third time BMW has produced an estate version of the mighty M5, despite the G90 saloon on which it’s based being the seventh-gen M5. It weighs just 40kg more than the saloon, which seems impressive in isolation, until you realise that at 2,475kg it’s still a very heavy car, even compared with rivals such as the Audi RS 6 Avant, which weighs over 300kg less.

Yet, says BMW, the M5 Touring’s weighty hybrid powertrain gives it a depth of dynamic flexibility that no rival can get close to. Despite being a heavy plug-in hybrid, the M5 Touring is surprisingly green, and that makes it much cheaper to run as a company car; its official consumption figures of 166mpg and 39g/km mean its company car tax rates are far lower than any petrol competitors. In some markets, this brings major tax savings on the initial purchase price, so even though the Touring costs £113,405 in the UK, in Ireland, for example, it ends up costing almost £15k less than the M3 Touring because of the extra tax that’s applied to its smaller, purely petrol-powered cousin.

This aside, the M5 Touring is a technical tour de force like few before it – with not only a complex twin-turbo V8 hybrid powertrain that features five different drive modes but also four wheel-drive, four wheel-steering and enough electronic trickery within its box of tricks to baffle even the most intelligent of drivers, at least to begin with. 

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If its 22.1 kWh battery is fully charged it will run for 35-40 miles on pure electricity alone, meaning you can drive it into and out of any UK town and most decent size cities without blowing any carbon into the air. A charge takes around three hours to achieve at a 7kW AC charge point, although you can also boost it on the move by selecting e-Control mode, in which case it takes 20 minutes to recharge but burns fuel in the process.

With a full tank of fuel, you’ll get over 400 miles before a refill of its 60-litre fuel tank is required. Or you can select Dynamic or Dynamic Plus modes, which give full access to the power produced by both the twin-turbo 4.4-litre V8 AND the single e-motor, at which point you’ll have 717bhp and the not-so-small matter of 1,000Nm beneath your right foot – and rather higher fuel consumption to deal with.

In ‘full beans’ Dynamic Plus mode and with launch control engaged, the M5 Touring is stupefyingly fast, despite weighing as much as a previous generation Range Rover. Officially, it’ll hit 62mph from rest in just 3.6sec (a tenth slower than the saloon) and is restricted to either 155mph or 189mph, depending on whether you’ve specified the M-Driver’s Package or not. Yet in reality it feels faster than the raw numbers suggest, with a never-ending supply of torque available that catapults it towards the horizon with an urgency that not even the Audi RS 6 can replicate.

Its monstrous power reaches the road via an electronically controlled four wheel-drive system and an eight-speed M-Steptronic gearbox that can shift gears with breath-taking speed and refinement. Considering the power and torque that are being dished out by the powertrain, the way the transmission copes with everything so calmly is deeply impressive. Or you can dive into the M Driver’s menu and select ‘2WD’ at which point all 717bhp is sent to the rear axle, and your once-fast-but-soothing M5 Touring can be transformed into a tyre-shredding lunatic of a car. It’s up to you.

The chassis of the Touring is essentially the same as that of the saloon, but the rear suspension is deliberately a touch softer to provide more ride comfort for the load lugger. You can spot the differences quite easily on the move, and if anything the Touring’s more soothing demeanour suits the new M5 better than the saloon. Ultimately this is a car that works best on fast dual carriageways and motorways. It’s not a B-road crusher in either form because it’s too big physically for that. As a result the more relaxed machinations of the Touring’s chassis are more appropriate overall. They suit the car’s M7-like personality that much better.

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Inside, the M5 Touring looks and feels identical to the saloon from the front seats. It’s chock full of tech and ‘dynamic lighting’ features that make it feel quite over-the-top on first acquaintance. In the rear, it feels genuinely luxurious in the amount of space it offers, with three seat belts in the back and class-leading amounts of head and legroom. 

As in the i5, there’s a full wraparound screen that serves as the main instrument display in front of the driver with the infotainment hub sitting above the centre console. There’s also a nest of partially haptic switches down by your right elbow that provide access to numerous other dynamic menus, plus there are two M-buttons on the steering wheel that allow you to pre-set them. If that’s not enough to keep your brain busy, there’s also a ‘Boost’ feature that puts everything into maximum attack mode for around 10 seconds if you pull and hold the left-hand gear paddle.

Of more use, arguably, is the wide, flat and well-shaped load area that can provide up to 1630 litres of luggage space with the rear seats folded. Leave the seats in place and there’s exactly 500 litres of boot space, which is decent given the amount of technology contained within the car’s architecture, though not quite as spacious as an  RS6 (565/1,680 litres) but better than a Porsche Panamera Sport Turismo (520/1,390 litres). 

Not that the Porsche Sport Turismo is on sale anymore, sadly, meaning the M5 Touring will have the uber-fast hybrid estate market pretty much to itself when it reaches the UK in March next year. BMW expects the Touring to account for between 10-15 per cent of overall M5 sales at the moment, but, especially as it costs just £2,000 or 1.7 per cent more, we suspect it may do better than that in the fullness of time. It’s the more appealing of the two models, in our opinion.