2025 BMW M5 Touring Review

The 2025 BMW M5 Touring is not a sports car substitute.

It may make sports car power, and even put down sports car lap times, but in reality it’s a luxury car that happens to be really freakin’ fast. If that’s what you’re after, the latest M5 (mostly) fulfills its mission, and the long-roof version tested here only adds to its oxymoronic super-family-car aura. But if you’re looking for a one-for-the-ages E39 successor that’ll make you want to sell your Lamborghini and your Land Rover, you might want to look elsewhere.

Styling 7.5 / 10

Is the new BMW M5 the most beautiful car on earth, or even the most beautiful car in its class? No. Offensive? Also no. In any case, the M5 Touring’s wagon proportions and premise give it a leg up in the style department over the sedan, and its punchier fenders, huge rear diffuser, and staggered M wheels let onlookers know this isn’t a normal family vehicle.

The cabin looks extremely cool, even if some plastics feel cheaper than the stuff in the previous sedan-only generation. Crystal light bars span the dash and extend onto the front doors, while the steering wheel is chunky and purposeful-looking. Build quality — that is, how the plastics, upholsteries, and alloys fit together, not the plastics themselves — is a highlight, although this well-worn press unit had a driver’s seat that creaked a little.

Fair warning for any prospective owners: the M5 is one of those BMWs whose kidney grille is lit up at night, a deeply embarrassing discovery the first time I saw its reflection in the paintwork of another car after sundown. You might as well wear a Ralph Lauren polo where the guy on the horse not only takes up your entire chest but, y’know, glows in the dark.

Safety 8.5 / 10

Equipped with the $2,000 Advanced Driver Assistance package, the M5 Touring gets adaptive cruise control with a traffic jam assistant, as well as a steering and lane control system. Semi-automated highway driving works pretty well, and it’ll negotiate bends with minimal driver input, but it’s very much a hands-on system.

This generation of 5 Series is a Top Safety Pick, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS). It scored “Good” overall when it came to crashworthiness, crash avoidance, and crash mitigation.

Features 9 / 10

With the M5 effectively being a top-trim 5 Series, it’s fairly well equipped from the jump — as it should be, at $138,000 to start. (The price tag has increased to $144,900 before options, freight, and taxes for 2026.) Standard gizmos include two big screens, wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, a head-up display, those cool light bars, premium audio, power-adjustable seats with memory settings, wireless charging, ambient interior lighting, and a fixed panoramic sunroof that’s positively huge.

The only additional package available is the aforementioned ADAS bundle, while à la carte options include $500 rear window sunshades, carbon-fibre mirror caps for $1,500, and the $10,900 carbon ceramic brakes fitted to this tester. There are also plenty of paint colours, wheels, upholstery and interior trim, and an increased top speed package.

User-Friendliness 7 / 10

As with most new BMWs, how well you get along with the M5 Touring as a user will depend heavily on your comfort level with touch-sensitive controls. If you like ‘em, you’ll feel right at home. If you prefer physical switches, there will be a learning curve.

The infotainment interface is decidedly alright to use in relation to the average car screen in 2025 and it’s immensely configurable, but Apple CarPlay stayed engaged throughout the bulk of my time with this wagon. The system can now relay navigation directions via a connected phone through the head-up display, so that’s nice. The displays themselves are top-notch, too — bright, sharp, and accurate in color — while M-themed instruments look like the overlays from a Spider-Man video game.

Practicality 9 / 10

On top of the obvious image-based flex, opting for the wagon version M5 also comes with increased practicality. With the seats up, there’s 500 L of cargo room (the sedan’s trunk is 466 L), and the space can expand to 1,630 L with the rear seats down. That’s 100 L more than the X6 SUV has.

Rear-seat space is appropriate for a midsize executive car, and occupants in the back get their own climate zones (for a total of four). Those seats are also heated, and the optional sunshades keep the space cool and comfortable during the day.

Power 9 / 10

The “Touring” part of this car is a bonus — the M5 bit is the main course. As the proverbial big slab of protein, it’s powered by a twin-turbocharged 4.4L V8, and it’s paired with a plug-in hybrid (PHEV) system that adds up to 717 hp and 738 lb-ft of torque. On paper and in practice, this is an absolutely prodigious amount of output. BMW says it’ll hit 100 km/h from a standing start in 3.6 seconds, but it frankly feels quicker than that. The M5 Touring tops out at 305 km/h with performance tires and that optional M Driver’s package ($2,500).

Stab the throttle in any gear at any moment, and this performance wagon wallops you in the face with thrust. A silent electric kick followed by sudden V8 fire at the top end would be nifty and very hybrid-supercar, but the M5 doesn’t really do that. It all just sort of blends together into one relentless, loud wave of forward motion.

In full electric mode, it emits a low, likely artificial, internal combustion-esque hum, but this is a hybrid that tries not to feel or sound like a hybrid. What does mark it out as one is the conspicuous lack of growl or occasion when you start it up in the morning.

Driving Feel 8 / 10

Perhaps the biggest enthusiast talking point around the new M5 is its weight: in Touring form, there’s 2,485 kg (5,478 lb) of car here, which makes it 26 per cent heavier than the previous M5 Competition sedan. Adaptive suspension, all-wheel drive, a sport differential, and sticky tires do their darndest to hide the heft, though, and when driven with mild spirit on a public backroad, they mostly pull it off. Drive it a little harder, however, and the M5 feels like a battleship, not a scalpel. Sure, it’s a battleship that can pull all kinds of lateral g-forces, but it’s a battleship nonetheless.

The driving position is good, the steering is quick and precise (but fairly numb), and the big, gold-caliper ceramic brakes are mighty and easy to use even if they’re decidedly ordinary in terms of pedal feel. At this point in BMW M’s story, expecting a regular M5 to drive like a true canyon carver was always going to end in disappointment. And given its real mission of being a tech-laden executive wagon that happens to be super fast, the M5 passes muster and can even dazzle a bit, given its weight.

The biggest counterpoint against it, then, is probably the fact that it simply isn’t as fun to drive as its archrival, the Audi RS 6 wagon. Comparison really is the thief of joy.

Quick aside: absolutely everything from the steering to the brakes to the shift aggression is configurable. The brand’s M cars have been like this for a while now, but it reaches new heights with the new M5’s hybrid and energy recovery settings. That settings menu is now bordering on self-parody — the physical screen is literally not tall enough to display all the parameters you can configure, you have to scroll to see all of it.

I’m sure there’s a BMW focus group executive summary somewhere that says buyers do indeed enjoy this, but I feel like this is one of those late-stage luxury car tics that we’ll be psychoanalyzing with embarrassed bewilderment in about 20 years' time.

Comfort 6.5 / 10

The M5 Touring not quite being a 10/10 driver’s car came as little surprise, but what did surprise me was the rough ride. On all but the smoothest roads, this car is notably busy and jiggly for a luxury wagon, even with the dampers in comfort mode. It’s also not as quiet on the highway as you might imagine a top-shelf 5 Series should be. On the bright side, all the seats are nice and comfy. As standard, the steering wheel is heated, as are all four outboard seats, and the ones up front get ventilation but no massage.

Fuel Economy 9 / 10

Natural Resources Canada (NRCan) rates the M5 Touring for 4.4 Le/100 km in electric mode but a thirsty 17.5 L/100 km combined from the V8. For what it’s worth, I observed 12.3 L/100 km over 440 km of mixed testing starting with a full battery and no subsequent recharges. That isn’t bad for the sheer amount of car here, both in terms of performance and heft.

Official stats say the M5 Touring is good for 40 km of range on just electric when the battery’s full. So if your commute is shorter than that and you can plug in overnight or at work, you can feasibly use this as a daily driver without burning a drop of fuel until you have to go further.

Value 7 / 10

The 2025 BMW M5 Touring starts at $138,000. This tester had the driver-assist pack, $6,000 worth of matte white paint, fancy leather for $1,000, the $10,900 ceramic brakes, and, of course, the $500 rear sunshades. Add the freight charge ($2,555), and this wagon rang in at $160,955 — and don’t forget there’s luxury tax on top of that.

A similarly equipped RS 6, meanwhile, crests $180,000, and Mercedes-Benz is getting back into the performance wagon market with the 2026 Mercedes-AMG E 53 PHEV. It isn’t on the same level as this M5 nor the RS 6 in terms of performance and it shows in the price tag, and it starts at $109,900.

The Verdict

The M5 Touring feels like it was made after BMW product planners read one headline in 2019 about how enthusiasts want more fast wagons, then proceeded to greenlight the project without actually finishing the rest of the article that delved into what enthusiasts actually want out of one. If they had, this car would be light and chuckable and analog and undeniably beautiful.

The 2025 BMW M5 Touring, naturally, is none of those things. On the flip side, it also rides too harshly and loudly to serve as a spectacular family car. Vehicles in this specific arena are supposed to miraculously make both the weekend sports car and family SUV in your garage feel redundant. That’s the brief — that’s what they’re for.

The new M5 doesn’t really do either job as well as it probably should, and if that sounds like too tall an order, I implore you to go drive an RS 6 or Porsche Taycan (which also comes in a wagon-like body style) and get back to me.

On a purely technical level, the M5 Touring and its plug-in V8 powertrain, as well as the chassis tech reigning all that weight in, is quite impressive in the same way as high-speed rail. It’s awe-inspiring the first six times you experience it, but are you buying tickets to ride it around for fun on lazy weekends? Probably not.