2024 BMW M3 Competition Touring First Drive: The Wagon We Want!

The upshift light flickers across the car’s dash almost immediately as the tach readout shoots toward the 7,250-rpm redline and the numbers on the digital speedometer in the head-up display tumble upward. Click. Sixth gear. Click. Seventh gear. Click. Eighth gear, the car’s mad rush for the horizon scarcely abating as the dual-clutch transmission smoothly switches ratios.

There’s a muted whoomp! as we blow by an Opel waffling along in the middle lane at no more than 90 mph, but the car tracks arrow straight, hunkered down on its suspension. Finally, the numbers in the head-up display begin to change more slowly: 265 … 270 … 275 … 280 kph. That’s 174 mph in the old money. The sound of 503 highly tuned horses at full stampede fills the cabin with an edgy, metallic snarl.

Station wagons are boring, right? Not BMW’s M3 Competition Touring. It might look like a wagon. But it drives like a race car.

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What Was BMW Waiting For?!

Launched in 2022 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of BMW M GmbH, the M3 Competition Touring is the fourth body variant in the M3/M4 family. Over the years, enthusiasts have stuck running gear from E30, E36, and E46 M3s into wagon bodies—and BMW itself reportedly built a few mules to test the idea—but this is the first long-roof M3 officially created by BMW’s in-house hot shop.

You wonder why it took so long. Razor-sharp performance and handling with a side order of load lugging capability? Sounds like the perfect all-rounder to us, certainly more appealing than a lumbering M-badged SUV. It even has standard all-wheel drive if you live in the snowbelt states.

A you’d expect, most of the hardware under the skin of the M3 Competition Touring has been lifted pretty much straight out of the all-wheel-drive M3 Competition xDrive sedan, a car that stirred us during our 2022 Performance Vehicle of the Year shootout.

“Hilariously unhinged” was senior features editor Christian Seabaugh’s succinct summation of the BMW four-door that proved just 0.2 second slower to 60 mph than a 630-hp Lamborghini Huracán STO and could hang with a 720-hp Mercedes-AMG GT Black Series on Angeles Crest Highway. He’d probably need to lie down in a dark room after a fast drive in the M3 wagon.

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Big Power, Big Abilities

As in the sedan, the twin-turbocharged BMW straight-six under the hood of the M3 Competition Touring makes its 503 hp at 6,250 rpm and pumps out 479 lb-ft of torque from 2,750 to 5,500 rpm. BMW claims a 0–60-mph acceleration time of 3.4 seconds, which is identical to that claimed for the sedan. But the sedan nailed a 0–60-mph time of 3.0 seconds in our testing, on the way to running a 11.1-second quarter mile at 124.7 mph. And the wagon feels scarcely any slower.

On a quiet Sunday-morning blast through central Bavaria, with the engine and transmission in their most aggressive settings and the drivetrain in 4WD Sport, the M3 Competition Touring attacked the empty two-lanes with the poise and precision, the verve and vivid acceleration of a supercar.

It felt crisper and cleaner while changing direction than the previous-generation Mercedes-AMG C63 S wagon we drove across Germany in 2020. That’s partly because the BMW is slightly lighter than the thundering, V-8-powered Mercedes. But it’s also because the M3 Competition is less nose heavy, boasting a 50/50 front to rear weight distribution compared with the 55/45 of the C63 S.

What you don’t feel, however, is exactly what’s happening where the rubber meets the road. Yes, the M3 Competition Touring pretty much goes where you point it with minimal fuss. The impressive front-end grip is balanced by the 4WD Sport setting’s propensity to send as much drive as possible to the rear wheels. (We weren’t about to get all smoky and sideways in two-wheel drive or Drift mode on a public road.)

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Can We Feel More?

But it can at times seem a little video game-y. The steering is pin-sharp, but there’s not a ton of feedback. Maintaining serious pace in the M3 Competition Touring along an unfamiliar winding road is more about trust than tactility; trust that the car will turn in when you want it to and deliver the grip you need through all phases of the corner rather than being able to gauge the rate at which the cornering loads are building at the tire’s contact patch.

Speaking of which, the M3 Competition Touring rolls on a staggered tire setup, the 19-inch wheels up front wrapped in 275/35 Michelin Pilot Sport 4 S tires, with the 20-inch rears wearing meaty 285/30 rubber.

Lurking behind the spidery forged alloys on our test car were the optional M Carbon brakes, the front rotors clamped by six-piston calipers. The M version of the BMW’s integrated braking system allows drivers to choose between two pedal feel settings, one comfort-oriented and the other very direct.

To be honest, there’s not a lot of difference in the resultant performance on the road. We suspect there might be a more noticeable effect on the track. A wagon at a track day? Why not? Based on our experience with its sedan sibling, this BMW wagon would make some Porsches and Ferraris and Lambos work hard to stay ahead. And it would attract a lot more attention than any of them.

It’s an angrily muscular-looking thing, the M3 Competition Touring, ’roid rage on wheels. Measuring 3.2 inches longer overall than a regular 3 Series wagon, and 3.0 inches wider, it looks tougher and more menacing than either the M3 sedan or the M4 coupe, particularly at the rear, where the diffuser thrusts outward, flanked by a pair of bazooka-caliber dual exhaust outlets. And the triple black color scheme of our car, combined with the front license plate mandatory in Germany, almost disguised the piggy-snout grille. Almost.

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Inside the Beast

The interior is dominated by BMW’s giant curved display screen, on which live a 12.3-inch instrument panel and a 14.9-inch infotainment screen, all powered by BMW’s Operating System 8. M-specific design features, including red accents on the M buttons on the steering wheel and the start/stop button on the center console, litter the cabin. The shifter in the console features an embedded M logo and stitching in M colors. Leather trim is standard, but if you order the full leather package, you get leather-covered kneepads on either side of the tunnel.

Our test example came fitted with the optional M Carbon sport seats whose carbon-fiber construction makes them 21 pounds lighter than the regular seats. However, their sharply edged side bolsters make them a pain—literally—to get in and out of unless you’re possessed of a race driver’s snake-hipped agility. And if you left-foot brake, you will feel the hard raised carbon element at the center of the seat bottom cushion every time you move your left leg. They are a designer’s idea of a race seat, not the real thing.

The M3 Competition Touring’s unique selling point is, of course, that it’s a wagon. So let’s talk the things you need to know if you needed to persuade your other half that it’s a practical car that just happens to go fast. The fold-down rear-seat backrest is split 40/20/40, and with all three elements lowered the load capacity is increased from 17.6 cubic feet to 53.3. And the rear window can be opened independently of the power tailgate if you need quick access to the load space or the family Labrador.

Even with the optional M Race Track package that increases its price 16 percent but gives you all the right go-fast goodies, including the carbon brakes and 174-mph top speed, BMW’s high-performance wagon costs less in Germany than a base Porsche 911 Carrera, a car that’s slower to 60 mph and just 8 mph faster at the top end, and has nowhere near the same room for all your stuff. German pricing suggests the MSRP of an M3 Competition Touring optioned to the same level as our test car would be about $103,000, or roughly $1,000 to $2,000 more than a similarly equipped M3 Competition xDrive. We’d say it’s worth it, but alas, we won’t get it here in America.

Too bad. Fast and useful, with room for the kids and the dog, the BMW M3 Competition Touring is the family-friendly sports car. We’ll just have to save up for the even beastlier, even pricier M5 Touring, which is coming to the U.S. as a 2025 model. So there’s that.