Wagons rule: V10 BMW M5 Touring meets AMG E63 and Audi RS4

The new BMW M5 Touring has just been revealed, marking the return of Munich’s super-estate after 14 years – and setting the stage for a revival of an epic three-way showdown.

In 2007, we pitched the storming, V10-engined E61-generation M5 Touring against its V8-toting German rivals, the Audi RS4 Avant and Mercedes-AMG C63, to find out which was the best super-estate – and maybe even the best car – around. 

It was a battle of pace, poise and – crucially – practicality, with our testers even stuffing each car with 350kg of ballast for a fully loaded lap of the track. 

But which of these three ‘bahnstorming legends emerged as the overall winner? Here’s an extract from one of our loudest and smokiest tests yet, and you can read the full feature on the Autocar archive – where you can search and read through 129 years of the weekly magazine at the click of a button. 

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2 May 2007: Wagons rule

You’d have to admit that if any company can claim universal ownership of the performance sector and its many sub-branches, then BMW is that organisation. It alone has made performance the mainstream staple and at very least competes in and often dominates every market it enters.

Sports saloons, super-heated saloons, girly roadsters and, well, I don’t know what words aptly describe the X3 with the 535d motor in it, but high-performance should surely figure among them: with this strategy, the boys from Bavaria have seconded high-performance as their own dialect, their own language.

How strange, then, that the single largest area of very-high-performance expansion has been ignored by BMW for the best part of two decades: the super-estate. Since BMW last made an M5 touring, and remembering that it was left-hand drive only, Audi has bolted any number of turbochargers to its regular A4 and A6 wagons to produce some memorably hardcore estate cars. And Mercedes has hardly been inactive on this front either: C- and E-class variants for speed fans have existed for yonks.

But not BMW. It was willing to knock out faster V8 versions of the E39 5-series touring, but nothing more. In its defence, BMW’s M division did make an E39 M5 touring, and by that I mean a single version, for its boss Gerhard Richter. Demand was never seen as strong enough to warrant full production.

In the meantime, Audi set about taking advantage of this glaring hole in the BMW performance empire. And you could argue that five-door Audis from the original RS2 onwards have done more for the firm’s credibility than all its other cars put together, original Quattro included. They have become a breed of their own: the most practical, robust, useable and indecently rapid dog-carriers in town. BMW would never admit as much, but the UK’s insatiable appetite for these cars must have had some influence on its decision to build another M5 touring.

What is it about these three cars that I find so much more appealing because of their station wagon status? Well, I like machines that cloak their performance, and a spacious, practical bodyshell is ideal for this. I have also always suffered heavily at the hands of ‘other car’ syndrome, the process whereby a driver finds themselves in their wrong car at the wrong time. In a fast estate car, all potentialities are covered. Taking the family out. A trip to the tip. Antagonising supercars.

For evidence of how far the performance car has come in the past 15 years, observe the weaponry on display here. The tiddler of the pack is the 414bhp Audi RS4. Its 4.2litre V8 revs to beyond 8000rpm and in any other five-door company those stats, its swollen shoulders and distended mouth would send rivals running to mummy.

Not here. The new M5 has a similar specific output to the Audi (does anyone else share the nagging feeling that BMW, Maserati, Lamborghini and Audi use the same modular engines, so similar are their efficiencies and ability to rev?) but then lobs a pair of extra cylinders into the mix. The result is 500bhp at 7750rpm and a 200mph top speed, were BMW brave enough to remove the speed limiter.

We’ve become used to Mercedes waiting for Ingolstadt and Munich to wave their small arms about the place before unleashing the heavy artillery, and the E63 keeps to the tradition.

Drive an RS4, then have someone tell you that Merc makes something similar with an extra 93bhp, and most people will wince at the thought. So long as the company feels there is demand for an 507bhp E-class estate, we remain happy people…

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