2025 BMW M5 Touring Review: Haters Are Wrong, but It's Not for Everyone

The Drive

6 days ago

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If car dorks had churches, you'd see some of BMW's greatest hits on the stained glass and plastered on the walls. As you know, the 2025 BMW M5 Touring has been out for a bit, and reviews have been… mixed. As a wagon, this new luxury long roof is solid, but it doesn't look or feel like the bygone Bimmers that millennials grew up worshiping. And after hundreds of miles exploring its many modes and moods, I have complicated feelings about the darn thing myself.
The candid curmudgeon in me says it's embarrassingly gaudy, annoyingly complex, and too fast for public roads. The realist in me is much happier with the old non-M BMW wagon I have at home. But objectively speaking, there's no denying that the M5 Touring is supremely comfortable, capable, quick, and technologically advanced. Which is surely what was on the whiteboard of whatever Munich office this thing was conceived.
This is the seventh generation of BMW M5, chassis code G90 for the sedan and G99 for the wagon. M wagons are not entirely new, but they are to the U.S. market. The last time BMW sold a station wagon here at all was in 2018—the F31 3 Series—and the hottest version had a modest four-cylinder engine built for efficiency rather than performance.
That's not the case anymore. The new M5 Touring is an aggressive, 5,500-pound plug-in hybrid family car with 717 horsepower and peak system torque of 738 lb-ft. All that oomph comes from a 4.4-liter twin-turbo V8 and a synchronous electric motor paired to an eight-speed automatic transmission. Or in BMW-speak: It's got an M TwinPower Turbo V8, fifth-generation BMW eDrive, and M xDrive.
If that sounds complex, it's because it is, and so is the user interface. The new M5 offers many customizable features beyond the typical modern performance car driving settings, and it even swaps from all-wheel drive to rear-only in its most hardcore driving mode. Andrew P. Collins
If you're willing to take it easy on the throttle, the plug-in hybrid can go 25 miles on a full charge. I was not, but more on that later.
I have a 2017 BMW wagon myself—it's an M Sport, but that just means it has a few nice decorative flourishes. Still, I couldn't resist doing a photoshoot with the wagons together. Swipe through for some comparisons:
The M5 Touring's cargo area is generous, as you'd expect. Folding down the rear seats creates a downright huge hold for whatever you are carrying. You'll want to be very careful squeezing long items in, though. The rear climate control is run by a screen, and of course, the entire dashboard is pretty much a screen, so don't go yeeting lumber in there without somebody carefully guiding you from the inside.
Some particularly brutal commentary on the new M5 wagon came from critic Jason Cammisa, who recorded the wagon's wiggling under acceleration. 'I don't understand how any engineer let this car leave the building,' he said on his Carmudegon show. As an aficionado of classic German cars, he categorically hated it. I launched the car quite a few times and did not experience the same odd effect. But I agree with his assessment of the interior.
Chris Harris reviewed the M5 more favorably but still couched his praise, '…as a fast, roomy, daily that treads the line of acceptability in these weird times, I loved it.' Travis Okulski similarly appreciated the car's refinement but called it 'too isolating to feel like it's ever working on a back road.' Andrew P. Collins
Those guys all have serious driving experience and know what they're talking about, but I think Harris has the best assessment. An M5 is not optimized for smoking tires on Angeles Crest, it's not that likely to be used on a track, and it's definitely not supposed to feel like it's 'working' on a back road.
This car's happy place would be high-speed highway cruising across Europe. Log out in Munich on Friday and prost 'ing at a bar in the Alps before the sun goes down. Zip the family down to Innsbruck for the evening.
At socially acceptable speeds, it's quite comfortable and appropriately responsive. I was pleasantly surprised by the ride quality, too. The last modern M car I drove was an X4 M Competition, which was downright punishing on New York roads. But I was satisfied with the M5 Touring's comfort-to-stiffness balance. It rides cleanly over potholes or unpaved roads, even in the more aggressive drive modes. But when you go to make a turn, the response is instantaneous. The downside of this high level of isolation is that when you're driving a new M5 at sub-stupid speeds, it kind of feels like the car's sitting still while the world is moving around it. Like the windows are screens, and you're playing a driving game. The cockpit is a fine place to watch things fly by from, though—the seats are spectacular, front and rear. Andrew P. Collins
Of course, one doesn't spend six figures on a 700-hp car to keep calm and carry on. New performance cars at this level are heavily comput'ified, and some, unfortunately, have reached an annoying level of capability where they're not fun until you're tripling the speed limit. Then, when you make a mistake, they drop you off a cliff—proverbial or otherwise. I fully expected the M5 to be one such vehicle.
Linking turns at an aggressive pace doesn't provide the sense of accomplishment or oneness-with-the-machine that you get in an old E46-something. But the M5 is surprisingly easy to line-step with and can be quickly reeled in from overly ambitious driving. If you boot the throttle in a sport driving mode to light up the tires and kick the tail out at an intersection, you can do that, and then regain control of the car with minimal effort and input. Andrew P. Collins
Granted, you don't really need a twin-turbo V8 for such silliness; all I'm saying is you don't need to be on the Autobahn to evoke some personality from the car.
All that to say, the car's core mission hasn't changed all that much since the days of the first M5. In the '80s, the E28 M5 was a showcase of the era's top sport-luxury car tech, just like the new one is today. But the reserved executive aesthetic BMW used to do so well has long been left behind. Andrew P. Collins
From the outside, the G99 M5's got some good angles and interesting visual details. More than a few passers-by complimented the Isle of Man Green Metallic color, and the optional Style 952M wheels are incredibly cool-looking. The vehicle has a lot of presence, and you don't need to be into cars to appreciate that you're looking at something special. Andrew P. Collins
The interior has some neat decorative elements. The cockpit, though—gauges, dash, buttons, touchpoint materials—is overwhelming in the worst kind of way. Sitting behind the steering wheel of the new M5 reminded me of everything that sucks about Las Vegas. It's just a ceaseless expanse of lights, colors, and shiny materials that look very cheap under the slightest scrutiny. There are way too many lines and shapes on the dashboard of this thing. And those butterfly wing lights on the front… not feeling it. Andrew P. Collins
At some point, the software designers at BMW must have been encouraged to get creative with displays. Maybe the idea was to be distinctive, maybe they just wanted to compensate for the inherent dullness of a huge rectangular screen being the only prominent shape in the cockpit. But they went way too hard. The gauge cluster is packed with so many colors, shapes, gradients, and shading. It's doing way too much and is neither legible nor cute.
Almost every flat surface is illuminated. When you hit the hazard lights, you're surrounded by red blinking bars like the car's trying to warn you of an incoming missile. A gaudy plastic bar illuminated in M colors spans the dash, and the few physical buttons that are present are disappointingly low-effort. Like, a row of buttons will actually all be one button, yielding a very unsatisfying haptic experience. Some of the door plastic feels like it was 3D-printed on some kid's tabletop machine.
In spite of my dissatisfaction with the interior, I would say that the M5 Touring is a decent value. At least in the context of cars at this price point. You get a lot of impressive technology, some unique capabilities, considerable practicality, and the novelty of being in a high-performance station wagon. These list for about $120,000 and they hold their own at that level. The longroof M5 looks like a six-figure car, and if you pick a good color, you'll make an entrance anywhere you pull up with this thing.
Like most of the elite cars I've driven lately, I was impressed by it, but you won't catch me staring at the window wishing it'd come back. I'm fine with my 200-odd horsepower BMW wagon from the last decade, which I think is quite a bit prettier.
It's more fitting to compare the new BMW M5 Touring to the Audi RS6 Avant. They're both about the same price, same idea, but have considerably different executions. Even though I've been called 'a BMW guy' (I do have three of them), it'd be the Audi for me if I had to choose.
If you're interested in a new M5 wagon, I wouldn't get too hung up on evaluations of its performance at the track or its limits. This is a battlecruiser, not a starfighter. And you will feel like you're on the bridge of a spaceship while driving it.
I'd much rather see an M340i Touring come to the U.S. market for people like me who appreciate sport-luxury wagons but don't want to commit $100,000 to a novelty. That said, I'm grateful that the M5 Touring finally came to America; here's to hoping it's a harbinger of more wagons, because sedan driving dynamics with crossover cargo capacity is a great combo. 2025 BMW M5 Touring Specs Base Price (as tested) $121,500 ($140,775) Powertrain 4.4-liter twin-turbo V8 with trans-integraged electric motor | 8-speed auto | all-wheel drive Horsepower Gas Engine: 577 @ 5,600-6,500Electric Motor: 194
Total System: 717 @ 5,600-6,500 Torque Gas Engine: 553 @ 1,800-5,400Electric Motor: 207
Total System: 738 @ 1,800-5,400 Seating Capacity 5 Cargo Volume 27.2 cubic feet behind second row | 57.6 behind first row Curb Weight 5,530 pounds 0-60 3.5 seconds Top Speed 190 mph (M Driver's Package), 155 mph standard EPA Fuel Economy 54 mpge combined, 13 mpg combined (gasoline only) Score 8/10
A big shiny battlecruiser for ostentatious aristocrats. But for some reason, I still think it's cool.