Wagons Ho!

The following excerpt from Bimmer mag (www.bimmer-mag.com) puts the spotlight on a somewhat forgotten corner for Bimmer-maniacs like myself: the 5-series Touring, more specifically, the M5 series Touring

When it comes to making high-performance versions of its station wagons available to enthusiasts, BMW has been inconsistent at best. Unlike Audi, which nearly always offers pumped-up versions of its wagons even to U.S. customers, BMW has offered M-series wagons only intermittently and has never sold them in North America. The company has never made an M3 wagon, and the first M5 Touring didn’t appear in Europe until 1992, when the E34 M5 sedan had already been in production for nearly four years.
And although BMW currently offers an E60 M5 wagon, at least in Europe, it didn’t even bother to create a Touring version of the third-generation E39 M5. That left wagon enthusiasts to build their own, perhaps on the basis of the 540iT. With a 290-hp M62 V8 under its hood, the 540iT offers a good starting point for the creation of an M5-alike.
That’s exactly what Jack Soliman and James Laitipaya used to create a pair of E39 wagons with M5-level performance. As much at home on a winding back road as on a run to the grocery store, these vehicles blend speed and functionality like only wagons can.In both cars, in fact, the only thing getting in the way of a truly M-like driving experience is the Steptronic automatic transmission. A manual would close the gap almost completely, though we have to acknowledge that the automatic gear change makes commuting painless.
Regardless of the transmission, driving these cars reminds us of what we miss when BMW fails to create a Touring version of every M5, and what we further miss every time it decides not to bring its highest-performance wagons to the U.S.
Too bad. There aren’t many automobiles that offer the combination of pace, practicality and style that these two BMWs provide