2023 BMW M3 Competition M xDrive Touring AWD review: eloquently violent and deranged

Want to know what it feels like to hit 100km/h in 3.6 seconds, with your dogs in the back? This is the station wagon for you.

‘It’s a complete gangster’: the BMW M3 Competition M xDrive Touring AWD

I once spent a whole week learning how to drive round Germany’s fearsome Nurburgring racetrack. And it quickly turned out that a week wasn’t going to be enough. The circuit is 25km long and hilly, with about 150 corners. Learning your way round a normal racetrack is like learning how to play Chopsticks on the piano. Learning your way round the ’Ring is like learning everything Mozart ever wrote. While being frightened half to death by a lion.

I’d arrive at the top of every hill, braking hard and changing down, ready for the corner I knew was just over the crest – and then it wasn’t; the track was dead straight. I dimly remember that if I pushed the cigarette lighter in as I exited the mini-Karussell, the penultimate corner, it would pop out as I reached the main straight, which meant I could have some ­relaxing puffs on the Marlboro ­before the right-hander at the end. Or was it a left-hander?

What made things even more difficult was that I really didn’t like the new car I was in, the BMW M3. Codenamed E30, it was built to comply with the rules of touring car racing, which said that before you could enter a car into an event more than 5,000 examples must have been made available to the general public. So really it was a racing car for the road, and as a ­result it was much loved by those of an oversteer disposition.

2022 BMW M3 Touring.

Back then, however, oversteer frightened me. If I turned into a corner and the back end started to slide round, I wouldn’t try to balance the throttle or apply opposite lock on the steering; I’d undo my seatbelt and try to climb into the back. Which is hard when you’re literally crapping yourself. And at the Nurburgring you will be crapping yourself because if you go off you will definitely hit something. Usually a tree. So for me, the whole week was a festival of skid marks.

Much later in life I learnt how to deal with oversteer and then, later still, I came to enjoy it. It’s what I did for a living. Oversteer and shouting. And I often wonder if I went back to the ’Ring with one of those early M3s whether I might fall a little bit in love with it.

I certainly did with most of the M3s that followed. Which is why I was very happy when BMW rang the other day to ask if I would like to test the new M3 Touring. I drove the saloon version a couple of years ago and loved it. I loved the power. I loved the handling. I even loved some of its dafter gimmicks, such as the way you can do a big oversteery skid and the car marks you for how good it was. That’s daft, irresponsible and possibly dangerous. But, like drinking too much beer when you’re in charge of the family firework display, it’s also brilliant.

‘If you push a lot of buttons it can become as sensible as a Volvo.’

And now they’ve put the whole package in a station wagon. Which means that, finally, your dogs can get to find out what it feels like to go from 0-100km/h in 3.6 seconds. The only drawback is that the rear quarters are carpeted, which could make clearing up the vomit tricky.

But that’s the thing with a modern day M3. If you push a lot of buttons it can become as sensible as a Volvo. I understand the appeal completely, because why have an ordinary saloon with an ordinary boot when you could have so much more, with no discernible downside? Some say there’s a noticeable drop in structural rigidity but I don’t buy that. What I do buy is that wagons often look better than their four-door sisters. I know the M3 Touring does: it’s a great looking car, And unlike other cars that use artificial exhaust noises to try to enhance the “driver experience”, the M3 doesn’t. No, this car is all about serving up the real deal. It’s about what happens when you switch off the four-wheel drive ­system and slot everything into beefy mode and put your foot down. I did that and had a wonderful tail-out moment.

It’s a complete gangster, but it’s a Guy Ritchie gangster. It’s eloquently violent. Elegantly deranged. When it kicks you in the groin, it’s wearing a Church’s brogue. Downsides? Very few. It’s pricey, the dash is bland, the ride can be a bit sudden even in comfort mode and er, that’s about it. Everything else about this car is sublime.

Today, knowing what I know about oversteer and how it can be savoured, I’d love to go round the ’Ring in it. And unlike the original M3, I’d enjoy driving it there and back as well.