It is a strange quirk of fate that the station wagon has morphed from mass-market family transport into something far more esoteric (at least here in the US, a market that once embraced the form factor like no other). Now, wagons come in two flavors. There's the "slightly lifted with some extra protective cladding" kind, designed with forest roads in mind but equally useful if you're surrounded by people who park by sense of smell. The other variety is the one that thinks it's really a supercar, with at least 600 hp (447 kW) and the ability to test if the kids and family dog get nauseous when subjected to high lateral Gs.
Even then, the US misses out. BMW will sell us an M5 Touring here, a plug-in hybrid wagon with 717 hp (535 kW), but it has no plans to bring over the smaller, (much) lighter M3 Touring, no matter how much we plead. That's a shame, as the M3 Touring is about to become even cooler: BMW is entering one in the Nürburgring Langstrecken-Serie, which races at the infamous racetrack in the Eifel Mountains.
The idea started as an April Fool's joke last year, but the overwhelmingly positive reaction from fans worked something loose, and someone in Munich signed off on a budget to make a station wagon version of its GT3 race car (the M4 GT3 EVO). It makes its NLS debut next week, with the highlight of the program being the Nürburgring 24H in mid-May. That race will also be contested by one Max Verstappen on a weekend away from F1.
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Source: Ars Technica
