A family wagon isn’t the most exciting car money can buy, especially if it’s painted in a dull color such as brown. However, the BMW M3 Touring is no ordinary estate, and its Zanzibar II metallic paint from the Individual catalog is far from being your typical boring brown shade. This G81 build goes a step further by featuring a bold interior finish in Kyalami Orange contrasted by black accents.
It’s certainly not your run-of-the-mill G81 build, and eagle-eyed readers will also spot the anniversary roundel introduced by BMW in 2022 to celebrate 50 years of its M division. The two-tone wheels (style 825M) are a perfect match for the first-ever M3 Touring, which will be joined next year by the return of the bigger M5 Touring.
Also coming as early as 2024 or in 2025 will be an updated M3 Touring even though the high-performance wagon was launched just last year. BMW is fast-tracking the car’s Life Cycle Impulse to align the long-roof model with the changes it intends to apply to the M3 Sedan (G80) for its LCI. Spy shots have revealed sharper-looking headlights, presumably switching to a matrix LED setup since we’ve been noticing laser tech is gradually being retired.
Sold exclusively as a Competition model with the eight-speed Steptronic automatic transmission and xDrive, the M3 Touring has proven to be a smash hit, so much so BMW has tripled production. A hotter CS version is being tested but the high-ranked officials from Munich have yet to give the family man’s CS the proverbial green light for production. Even if it’s planned, logic tells us it’ll be based on the M3 Touring LCI, so it’s not coming anytime soon.
Looking further ahead, the M3 Touring will get the purely electric treatment for a Neue Klasse-based model coming in the second half of the decade. It even has a codename already – ZA1. [Photos: Todor Todorov instagram.com/todorov5]