BMW M3 Touring Review & Prices

The BMW M3 Touring is BMW’s answer to the decades-old cries of enthusiasts, hankering for a car that combines motorsport proven, race-winning performance with day-to-day drivability and a big, dog-friendly boot. It’s just a shame it's not that well-equipped and the infotainment is a pain to navigate.

Think of the M3 Touring as a retired racehorse that now belongs to a family with a posh stables. It’s proven itself with years on the racecourse, now it’s ready for a life of fun with all the family. But it’s not alone, with the bigger and more powerful Audi RS6 Avant and BMW M5 Touring also on sale, as well as the more powerful (but less fun) Mercedes-AMG C63 S Estate.

Though none of those options have quite the same brash, ‘look at me’ styling of the M3 Touring. The enormous, nostril-like front grilles are still obnoxious, but time has been kind to them and they’re not as offensive as they were when the M3 was launched back in 2021.

The Touring gets the same burly, swollen wheel arches as the M3 saloon, while the back is arguably the most handsome part of the car - much like the larger BMW M5 Touring - with sleek taillights, an aggressive diffuser and enormous quad exhausts.

Watch: BMW M3 Touring v Audi RS6 drag race

A 2024 update completely revamped the interior, as the M3 Touring now features the latest-generation widescreen infotainment and driver displays. The curved screens feature lovely, crisp graphics and lots of customisable information, but the software is far too complicated to navigate and the climate controls are annoying to use.

You get sports seats as standard in the M3, but for a hefty £4,500 you can have a pair of optional - and superb - carbon fibre-backed bucket seats instead. They’re not the most comfortable on a long drive, but if you plan on carving through corners they hold you in place very well and sit you nice and low down in the car, plus they look awesome.

There’s decent storage up front with a mix of cupholders and storage cubbies, while space in the back is okay if not great. You actually get more legroom in the rear with the carbon bucket seats as they’re thinner, and the holes in the backrests mean you have lots of space for your knees…or to poke the driver. The 500-litre boot has levers to drop the rear seats and the oh-so-useful pop-open glass hatch in the tailgate.

The M3 Touring makes for a usable, high-performance daily driver, even if you do occasionally get jostled around over bumps due to its stiff suspension. Its sheer girth can be unnerving when parking or fitting through width restrictions; 360-degree cameras ought to be standard fit, really.

The wide, sticky tyres generate a fair amount of road noise which resonates through the open, estate body shape and the stiff suspension does tend to thud over ruts in the road. It’s still usable, but a 3 Series is more comfortable.

Get it on a country lane, though, and you’ll be blown away by the M3’s cornering ability and prodigious levels of grip. The steering is very well judged and it feels agile for a car that’s only two occupants away from weighing two tonnes, but you ought to leave it in comfort mode. Sport and Sport+ suspension settings are just too stiff for our country lanes.

For an unmatched driving experience in such a large car, you’ll need the M3 CS Touring - not the regular car. It takes the M3 and dials it up to 11, with more power, a stiffer body shell, more direct steering and smarter suspension which not only makes it feel gripper and more poised, but is actually more comfortable as a result of its more responsive calibration.

It’s not just one of the best estate cars on sale, the M3 CS Touring is one of the best driver’s cars on sale - period - and you can take your dog to the vet or load the boot up with luggage for a family road trip, too.

Check out the latest BMW M3 Touring deals on Carwow, or have a look at M3 Touring lease deals instead. You can browse used M3 Tourings for sale through our trusted dealer network, or other used BMWs if you’d rather something a bit more sensible. Carwow can even help you sell your car when the time comes to switch

The BMW M3 Touring starts at almost £92,000, which feels good value considering it offers the same 0-62mph time and boot space as the much larger, more powerful M5 Touring for around £20,000 less.

Its most comparable alternative, the Mercedes-AMG C63 S Estate, costs over £10,000 more and again offers similar performance but a paltry 320-litre boot, as well as a lacklustre 2.0-litre hybrid engine which simply cannot compete with the M3’s sonorous 3.0-litre inline-six unit.

It’s easy to run the price of an M3 up though, especially considering you need the £2,000 technology pack for adaptive headlights, £200 for sound-deadening glass, £625 for 360-degree parking cameras and a whopping £2,175 to remove the M3’s 155mph speed limiter with the M Driver’s Pack, should you wish to explore all of your car’s performance on the autobahn, or the race track.

The CS, meanwhile, starts at a staggering £126,275, but you still don’t get ceramic brakes, sound-deadening glass or surround parking cameras as standard. Boo.

The stiffer suspension is surprisingly comfortable around town, but tyre noise at 70mph could become annoying over long distances

In town

With a practical performance car, you want it to be relatively easy to live with in day-to-day driving to make the most of what it offers. What’s the point in a fast estate if the ride is so bone-shakingly stiff you can’t bear to take it to the local IKEA?

Fortunately, the M3 Touring does an adequate job of smoothing out rough roads. Sure, it’s not as comfortable as the regular model, but only big bumps will shake you around. There are different suspension modes, but we’d recommend sticking to comfort, otherwise every pothole will make you wince.

The CS version manages to be no less pleasant or harsh around town than a regular model, its trick suspension tune doing an excellent job of hiding the extra spring stiffness and the extra power making it no harder to pull away from the lights smoothly.

You can raise the seat high, even with the figure-hugging carbon bucket seat, so visibility is good looking forward. It’s pretty clear out the back, too, even if the rear window looks like it’s in a different postcode.

The M3 Touring’s wide body kit makes it a little more intimidating to drive in narrow spaces, and those 20-inch rear, 19-inch front, alloy wheels are a constant source of kerb-strike anxiety. However, the suite of sensors will warn you if you’re getting too close, making busy streets easier to navigate.

On the motorway

It's on the motorway where the M3 Touring loses a few marks. Tyre noise is pretty intrusive in the M3 saloon, but it’s worse still in the Touring and marginally worse again in the CS model, as the lack of a rear bulkhead (as you get in a saloon) allows tyre noise to resonate through the cabin.

Both the Audi RS4 and RS6 are a much better option for those who will do a lot of long distance driving as they’re a bit more comfort-focused. If you’re committed to a fast BMW estate, the aforementioned M5 Touring will also appeal thanks to its increased refinement.

That being said, the M3 Touring’s seats are very comfortable. The optional carbon bucket seats we tested are fine in short bursts, but get some serious mileage under your belt and you’ll notice the lack of padding and lumbar support.

They’re also best suited to the slimmest of occupants, as it can be a pain to manoeuvre yourself in between the seat and steering wheel without catching your nether regions on the chunky side bolsters, should you have a bit of meat on your bones…

On a twisty road

Despite being a heavy old beast – at 1,825kg it’s much lighter than the hefty new M5 hybrid, but still weighty by any standards – the M3 Touring is at home on a twisty road. It hides its heft incredibly well, with the direct steering making it easy to place in a turn. It genuinely feels like a sports car. Just one you could move house in.

Don’t be tempted to switch to the Sport/Sport+ suspension settings here, though. Comfort mode is firm enough to offer that sports car feel on UK roads while also having enough slack to deal with bumps in the road. The Tarmac needs to be race track smooth to take advantage of the stiffer settings.

The CS version really comes alive on a good road, with the extra 21hp from its re-tuned engine surging all the way to the rev-limiter effortlessly, and the CS-specific tweaks to the brakes, suspension and chassis make it effortless to carry speed through winding roads with complete confidence in the car.

The rear seats are more spacious than those in the saloon, but the boot doesn’t have the jump in capacity you might hope for

There’s plenty of adjustability for the driver, with the seats and steering wheel offering lots of movement so you can find a great driving position. The steering wheel gets two M mode switches that allow you to load two different setups, for example one for fast road driving and another for the track.

As standard you get carbon fibre lashed all over the place to give off a proper race car feel, while M logos are dotted around to remind you you’re in something a bit special, just in case all that carbon hadn’t caught your eye.

Space in the back seats

The rear seats are comfortable to sit in and there’s loads of room for adults. There’s more headroom than the saloon, so if you regularly carry passengers that could be another tick in the Touring’s box.

Legroom is also decent, but if you get the carbon bucket seats it’s even more spacious, which is a good head-over-heart excuse to go for that option. They’re also lovely to look at, making long journeys in the back a bit more bearable.

Boot space

The key selling point for the M3 Touring is its extra load-lugging ability. Truth be told, the 500-litre boot capacity is maybe not as much of a jump as you might expect from the saloon’s 480 litres, but the opening is much more square, making it easier to load large items.

The rear seats can be dropped using handy electric switches, opening the boot to reveal 1,510 litres of space – so much better than the paltry 320 litres (seats up) and 1,335 litres (seats down) offered by the hybrid Mercedes C63.

With the seats folded down there’s no lip, so if you’re loading flat pack furniture in the back it’s easy to push it through to the front seats. Careful if you’ve got the carbon buckets, though, as they could be easy to damage if heavy items bang up against them while you’re driving around.

The large, curved screens look fantastic, but the system isn’t as easy to use as that in the old car

If you're sat in the front, the M3 Touring is no different to the saloon. That means you get the huge, curving infotainment and instrument displays with their extra M-specific screens and settings.

These screens are made up of a 14.9-inch infotainment screen and a 12.3-inch driver’s display. The screens are crystal clear and the menu design is ultra-modern, but they’re not quite as intuitive to use as the old system especially now that there are no physical climate control buttons. Apple CarPlay and Android Auto are included as standard, so they’re your best bet for audio and navigation.

The M Drive Professional apps are a neat addition. They allow you to record lap times and compare them with previous efforts. There’s also a drift analyser that scores your sideways efforts out of five stars.

The 3.0-litre petrol engine has an official fuel economy figure of 27.4mpg, which is actually pretty respectable for a big, heavy car with 530hp. During testing we saw about 21mpg, which isn’t quite as good, but then it is hard to resist being heavy with the throttle pedal in a car that goes this well. CO2 emissions sit at up to 235g/km. The M3 Touring CS is slightly worse off, with fuel economy of 26.9mpg (officially) and CO2 emissions of 238g/km, but neither will make much of a difference to your overall costs.

The M3 Touring falls into one of the higher first-year Vehicle Excise Duty bands because of its high emissions — £4,680 — while its purchase price means it also faces the over-£40,000 premium between years two and six after registration — and extra £425.

If you’re a company car buyer, you’re looking at BIK costs of around £540 a month for the M3 Touring, and up to £750 a month for the M3 Touring CS.

There’s the usual suite of driver assistance systems present and correct here, such as lane departure warning, lane change warning and rear collision prevention, which use cameras around the car to spot trouble and avoid or mitigate any incidents.

Disappointingly, although this is an £90-odd-thousand car to start with, you only get regular cruise control as standard. Adaptive cruise is an optional extra that comes as part of the Technology Plus Pack, which also brings a dashcam and parking assistant.

The M3 Touring nor regular 3 Series Touring have been crash tested by Euro NCAP, but the saloon version scored five-out-of-five with a huge 97% rating for adult occupants. Its 87% score for both child occupant protection and vulnerable road users is also impressive.

BMW came eighth out of 31 manufacturers entered into the 2025 Driver Power survey for owner satisfaction, which is a fairly impressive result and should leave you with little worry about M3 ownership.

There are no common reliability issues with the BMW M3, with most owners noting that recurring problems with the previous generation’s engine appear to have largely been addressed for the latest model.

However, it’s worth noting that although it’s based on a popular, more affordable car, the M3 Touring is a performance car, so if anything goes wrong it will likely cost a good chunk more to replace than your average 3 Series.

The M3 Touring comes with a three-year, unlimited mileage new car warranty that includes roadside assistance. For an extra £1,620 you can get BMW Service Inclusive, which covers your servicing for the first four years. This uses BMW technicians and genuine parts that are (mostly) covered for two years. BMW will also cover the cost of any MOT failures during the term of the agreement.