Is the BMW M5 Touring coming to the U.S. or not?
Here’s another placeholder post that’s got the usual dose of rumor and he-said-she-said on one side, pitted against usually reliable insider information on the other. In this case, it’s also got a claimed admission from an automaker exec, followed by a denial from the same exec, and an intriguing PR non-statement. We’re fascinated by all of it — and hopeful! — because it concerns the next-generation BMW M5 Touring. The Munich automaker’s teased what’s going to be a mighty fast wagon for a few months before debuting the standard version last week. On all of our teaser posts, we’ve noted that it’s not clear if the family missile is coming our way. This week, however, Quebec, Canada outlet The Car Guide wrote that during a press event in Portugal, one of its regular contributors “has learned from Domagoj Dukec, head of design at BMW, that the next-generation M5 will be sold in North America in both sedan and wagon body styles.”
This would be a noteworthy event if true, because auto execs almost always speak in conditionals even when we know what’s coming. Phrases like, “Don’t be surprised if,” “I would love to see,” and, “You might not be far off if you imagined,” are as close as one normally gets to confirmation of future product, if an exec will discuss it at all.
So, naturally, when Carscoops asked Dukec about giving confirmation, he replied, “No, I did not!” The Car Guide hasn’t changed the story except to update the context; the article’s first run said the contributor was there for a press event, and the event’s now been specified as the media drives for the 2024 BMW X2.
The original piece also included this line, though: “BMW Canada spokesman Jean-François Taylor reached out on Tuesday night and clarified that Canadian availability is still up in the air.” When U.S. outlets asked BMW USA about it, the local outpost said, “BMW M has confirmed the production of the BMW M5 Touring. Details related to when and in which markets this car will be offered will follow at a later date.”
That’s the he-said-she-said. Regular insiders say, “It’s definitely coming.” We’ll start with a regular BMW whisperer called ynguldyn on the Bimmerpost forum. This is the forum poster who told us in 2018 that the latest Toyota Supra “will be a Toyota in in body and name only,” and otherwise be a BMW Z4. More recently, he outed the 3.0 CSL a year before its debut, and the M4 CS last year. Seems that he posted this single line in a Bimmerpost thread on July 24, 2022: “US version of G99 M5 Touring is confirmed.” That was 17 months before the wholly unrelated insiders at BMW Blog ran spy shots of a camouflaged G99 M5 Touring testing in California and wrote, “The Bavarians have yet to confirm the M5 Wagon for the U.S. market, but it’s pretty much an open secret by now: we will finally see the versatile and powerful M5 next summer.”
In another BMW Blog story from seven months ago on the wagon’s U.S. chances, the outlet said M5 Touring production would begin this November. Ynguldyn updated his running list of future model information with, “G99 M5 Touring SOP 11/24,” indicating the wagon starts production four months after assembly lines begin building the sedan, without adding market exclusions.
We’re going to side with the clan that says it’s coming here. If that happens, we expect a twin-turbo 4.4-liter V8 plug-in hybrid powertrain with something like 715 horsepower and a nominal all-electric range.
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