The Heavyweight and the High-Mileage Hero: Decoding BMW’s Everyday Arsenal

I think the most telling remark to keep in mind regarding the new BMW M5 Touring didn’t come from a brochure, but from Dirk Hacker, head of R&D at BMW’s M Division. While letting my colleague Matt Saunders loose in a prototype wagon back in 2024, Hacker dropped a fascinating nugget of philosophy: “We had to remember that the M5… is a working vehicle, a tool for business and everyday life.”

It really does make you wonder if there’s a bit of a disconnect between what we enthusiasts demand from an M5 and what the actual buying public expects – or indeed, what Munich ultimately decides to build. Cast your mind back to the V8-powered E90 M3 of 2007. I distinctly remember the chorus of groans from purists who took one look at its heft and declared, this isn’t what an M3 is about. Yet, as time marched on, particularly with the later Competition packs, it cemented its legacy as one of the finest driver’s cars of the last twenty years.

You do have to ask whether this new, decidedly larger, and undeniably heavier M5 is a taste that requires a bit too much acquiring. Returning in estate guise from a rather steep £111,605, the M5 is now packing a plug-in hybrid V8 drivetrain. The rationale is simple enough: if you want a car that does absolutely everything and can be sold in every market, you need an ‘everything’ powertrain solution.

And what a piece of hardware it is. The M5 Touring’s belt-and-braces setup pairs a thumping 4.4-litre V8 – churning out 577bhp at 5600-6500rpm all on its own – with a 195bhp electric motor bolted to the gearbox. Combined, you’ve got a towering 718bhp at your disposal, capable of being deployed through all four wheels or just the rears if you fancy vaporising some rubber, a trick only the M division seems to get quite this right. The electric motor provides a massive, immediate torque fill that makes the car’s pace terrifyingly accessible.

To give it a usable motor-only range of up to 40 miles, BMW has stuffed an 18.6kWh battery under the floor. For context, that’s roughly the same capacity as the original BMW i3, which gives you a decent idea of how far that much juice could push a genuinely tiny, featherweight car. But let’s be absolutely clear: measuring 5096mm in length, seating five, and swallowing up to 1630 litres of luggage, the new M5 Touring is neither tiny nor lightweight. It’s grown outwards to accommodate the bulky PHEV tech, complete with flared arches that make it 1970mm wide – a full 70mm broader than a standard 5 Series.

When you start digging through the press materials for the letters ‘kg’, the PR machine prefers to highlight that it can tow a 2000kg trailer. Brilliant if you’ve got a track car to lug around, but it rather conveniently skirts past the colossal 2550kg kerbweight. To be fair, that’s the EU figure, which factors in a hypothetical 75kg driver and luggage on top of the DIN weight, making it about 40kg heavier than the saloon. When we actually put the saloon on our own scales, fully fuelled but otherwise empty, it tipped them at 2373kg. We can probably assume the Touring sits somewhere around the 2410kg mark in the real world.

Out on the road, it earns a solid 7 out of 10. It’s a technological tour de force with incredibly sophisticated body control, and it finds a natural rhythm on wide, sweeping A-roads. But there’s no escaping physics. That 2.5-tonne mass is a constant passenger, and on narrower, bumpier UK backroads, it frankly feels a size too large. It’s a far more grown-up affair than previous M5s, which is both a blessing and a curse.

But let’s loop back to Hacker’s premise for a moment. A working vehicle. A tool for everyday life. If an £111k, 718bhp super-estate feels a bit too excessive for the daily grind, what does a genuine Munich workhorse actually look like when you step off the M-Division cloud?

To find out, you probably need to look at a forecourt in Stuttgart, where a rather different proposition currently sits waiting for a new home. It’s a 2022 BMW X3 xDrive20d, up for grabs at a highly sensible €28,999. Now this is a tool for everyday life.

Sure, it’s got 132,000 kilometres on the clock, which might raise a few eyebrows, but it’s a one-owner car with a watertight, main-dealer service history. The last stamp in the book was in July 2025 at 125,118 km, which speaks volumes about how it’s been treated. Under the bonnet is BMW’s ubiquitous 2.0-litre four-pot diesel, bolstered by mild-hybrid tech. It sends a very respectable 190 horsepower and 400 Nm of torque through a silky eight-speed auto to all four wheels.

It’ll dispatch the 0-62mph sprint in roughly eight seconds and top out at 132mph (213 km/h). Far from neck-snapping, but perfectly adequate for the real world, especially when you factor in a fuel consumption figure hovering around a frugal 6 litres per 100km (about 47mpg).

It doesn’t skimp on the premium feel, either. Finished in Phytonic Blue metallic over black full-leather sports seats, it strikes a nice balance between smart and purposeful. You get the chunky sport leather steering wheel, high-gloss black trim, LED headlights, three-zone climate control, and heated seats. On the tech front, it’s packing Apple CarPlay, Android Auto, the Live Cockpit Plus digital dash, and a WLAN hotspot. More importantly for a daily driver, it’s loaded with the sort of kit that actually takes the sting out of a commute: Active Guard with brake assist, collision warning, and front and rear parking sensors. They’re even chucking in a spare set of winter wheels.

It leaves you with an interesting thought. The M5 Touring is an absolute triumph of engineering, bending the laws of physics to make a 2.5-tonne hybrid handle like a proper M car. It is a spectacular machine. But if you’re searching for a true automotive Swiss Army knife—a reliable, comfortable, go-anywhere tool that simply gets on with the job of everyday life—the high-mileage diesel X3 might just be the most honest car BMW makes.