Right, let’s settle a big score right away. Has the emergence – the world-conquering dominance – of the sporty SUV rendered the performance estate car obsolete?
That’s what BMW used to say. At the launch of the X3 M and X4 M twins back in 2019, BMW insisted it didn’t have any plans for an M3 Touring. No ma’am. Buyers who wanted to spend lots of money on lots of power and lots of boot space wanted SUVs – which explained why you could buy M versions of the X3, X4, X5 and X6, but not a single fast estate-shaped M car.
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Someone’s had a change of heart. The M3 Touring is here, and it’s superb. Not perfect, for reasons you can read in our main review, but as a package, it makes the best sense of any M3 / M4 version yet. More desirable than the CSL? Definitely. Well, for people who actually drive their cars, rather than locking them in a cupboard until they ripen for profit.
Photography: Mark Riccioni
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But we can’t ignore that SUVs – especially sporty Germans ones – are money printers. Porsche sells more Macans than Boxsters, Caymans and 911s combined. Add in the Cayenne family and you start to see just how crucial the SUV is to ‘sports car’ brands.
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The Macan is old now, though. It’s had more facelifts than Simon Cowell, and its skeleton is starting to creak. Underneath it’s based on an Audi Q5 that came along three whole Sugababes line-ups ago. Porsche’s baby SUV sits on foundations that are the best part of two decades old, and though it’s recently been treated to a flash new touchscreen and Panamera-style glass centre console, this car’s basically from 2013. An all-new, all-electric Macan takes over in 2024.
So obviously the BMW has the better interior. Right? Better define ‘better’. True, the M3 has larger, crisper displays and the shapes styled into the dashboard are more contemporary. But the Porsche has buttons to activate its heater, and you don’t need to dive headlong into a touchscreen maze to adjust the suspension stiffness or the throttle response. Not all of the last decade’s car interior trends have actually been progress.
The Porsche feels narrower inside than the BMW. You notice your elbows and knees clonking bits of cabin more often. It has squidgy chairs that wouldn’t look out place in a care home, while the BMW’s carbon shelled dungeon specials are almost sadistically supportive. And in the back, there’s very little to choose between these two as family cars. The Porsche lacks legroom, so the BMW edges it for raw space, but the sheer size of the Porsche’s taller back doors mean it’s easier to climb into.
I’m not going to labour the point that the estate car has the bigger boot, because this seems to be where the estate car tribe and SUV folks agree to disagree. A taller car is easier to slide stuff in and out of. You don’t need to stoop under the tailgate to retrieve shopping. But it’s also a longer leap for the dog, and the BMW’s cleverly appointed load bay with lashing points, seat-folding handles and generous underfloor stowage is the more versatile space. The split tailgate rear window is an extra useful feature.
You could make a very strong argument for either as an everyday taskmaster then. But when it comes to being selfish – to indulging their inner sports car – there’s no contest here. The poor old Porsche gets comprehensively walloped.
This is the most expensive, most powerful, fastest Porsche Macan: the GTS. During the last bout of botox Porsche upped the boost on the GTS’s 2.9-litre bi-turbo V6, and killed off the Macan Turbo, so the GTS inherited top dog status. The stats are outpunched by the BMW’s all-in-a-line six-pot: the 434bhp Porsche gives away 70bhp, and though it maintains 405lb ft of useful torque from 1,900 all the way to 5,600rpm, the BMW’s busy generating more oomph for longer.
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Drive them back to back and you’d swear blind the gap was wider. The BMW’s engine is deliciously responsive and revs sharply. Against it the Porsche’s Audi-loaned V6 is breathless, strained and laboured. It uses a heap of fuel, sounds reedy and makes a meal out of shifting 1,960kg of 4×4. The BMW has more power to move about 100kg less, and you feel it everywhere. Where the Porsche huffs and puffs and the gearbox dithers, the BMW is effortlessly, ruthlessly responsive.
Mind you, Macan powertrains have never been the car’s strong suit, because they come in a crate with an Audi sticker on the side. Porsche has to do its best to breathe in some urgency. But there are niggles that feel, well, unPorsche-y.
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There’s no manual mode for the gearbox – you can flap the paddles but it always defaults back to Auto. At start-up there’s a promising exhaust parp, but it soon settles into an unmemorable V6 drone. The M3 is by no means musical, but there’s more menace about its harder-edged quadruple pipe blare.
But where the wagon demolishes the SUV is when you stop fiddling with the settings and just point it at a vaguely challenging road. And it’s worth saying this isn’t a Porsche problem, it’s a physics problem. Sat higher up, you head gets tossed about more in the Macan. As per. The car is less settled than the lower (though very tautly sprung) M3. It gets tiresome. The Macan’s steering is more corrupted and distracted, kicking back over ruts and bumps. And the stopping distances it required are pretty eye-opening… though the M3 is enjoying an £8,000 carbon-ceramic brake advantage.
We didn’t choose the Macan just to come along for a mauling. It’s been the best-in-class small sports SUV for a decade. Over the years it’s seen off claims to the throne from the Mercedes GLC, BMW’s own X3 M and laughed in a Jaguar F-Pace’s square-jawed face. It’s been a faithful servant to Porsche, brought thousands of people into Porsche ownership and if I found myself in the market for a car of this size and type, I’d probably buy a (lower spec) Macan over any of its rivals. Not bad for an Audi Q5 that’s been to finishing school at the Nürburgring.
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It’s also considerably cheaper than the M3: this range-topper is £65,000 before options and even with a load of spec boxes ticked, comes to you with almost ten grand in change compared to a basic M3 Touring.
But next to the M3, the plucky SUV is completely outclassed as a drive. It never feels anything other than a tall family car trying its darndest to be engaging, while the M3’s character is ‘sports car that can carry a lawnmower. And clippings’.
And that’s what we wanted to know here – does a sports estate truly still have a place in a car world ruled by rufty-tufty 4x4s? Turns out, absolutely. It brutally exposes where SUVs are a compromise. One-nil to the M3 then. But Porsche will have a chance to gets its own back…
Keyword: BMW M3 Touring vs THE WORLD: first up, the Porsche Macan GTS
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