BMW M3 Touring (E46) review – driving the perfect super estate that never was

Quite where I switched lanes and entered an alternate reality I can’t be sure, but this definitely feels weird. Everything in front of me suggests I’m driving a familiar E46 BMW M3. One of BMW’s finest. Except that this example seems to be some sort of perfectly preserved museum piece: pristine switchgear, no wear on the steering wheel, bright tricolour stitching. But that’s not the really bizarre bit. In the words of pantomime audiences everywhere, it’s behind you.

A glance in the rear-view mirror… Yup, it’s still there. Someone has strung a small tennis net across the width of the car behind the rear headrests. There is, thankfully, no Alsatian or Weimaraner watching on from the other side of the dog net, but there’s definitely room for one. Or two.

But this doesn’t feel any different. Down one, two gears for the approaching bend, the S54 straight-six blipping with that distinctive metallic rasp. The shift still has that familiar knuckly feel, with almost no slack between the unseen gears beneath the gaiter, only the briefest lightening of pressure as you go through neutral.

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Turn in and there is the always surprisingly slow steering; good to be reminded that not all hydraulically assisted racks are constantly wriggling with feedback. But as the sidewalls load up, there’s no doubt about how hard you’re pushing the tyres and the balance feels spot-on, letting you get back on the throttle nice and early, guiding the rear end through. It feels just like an E46 M3. But another glance in the mirror shows that extra luggage space is still there… weird.

BMW didn’t build an E46 M3 Touring. Or rather, it did, but only the one and it was a concept. Finished in Chrome Shadow Metallic paint, it looked showroom-ready, as BMW concepts often do, but it wasn’t made public when it was created near the start of the millennium. There was no big reveal from beneath a silken sheet under the spotlights of a motor show stand. It was only in 2016 that the wider world was, rather cruelly, shown what might have been.

There is less pain now of course, because we have the soothing balm that is the brilliant G81 M3 Touring. And, despite having turbos and xDrive and EPAS and an automatic ’box, it is a car that stands comparison with any of its M3 ancestors. However, the fact that it is the best of the current M3 range does reinforce that ‘what might have been’ pondering with the E46. 

A few people over the last ten years have had a stab at creating their own version of that BMW unicorn, but this latest one has been undertaken by an Oxfordshire-based company called Petroyle. Established a couple of years ago, with much of the team transferring from another company, it has thus far been better known for restorations of ’50s and ’60s Astons and Jaguars, with a Series 2 E-type restoration winning its concours class at Salon Privé in 2025. And initially there was no real thought about deviating far from that world.

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However, Gregg Alvarez, the supremely bearded managing director of Petroyle, is an E46 M3 fan, and when the Alvarez family roster changed and his coupe looked a little less suitable for a child seat and a canine companion, his mind started whirring. With a huge amount of work put in by one of Petroyle’s young engineers, Matty Heron, the M3 Touring was born as an after-hours, skunkworks project. There was no business plan to set up a production run, no social media campaign to follow the build; Alvarez just thought he would show people his car when it was finished and see what the reaction was…

I think it’s fair to say the reaction has caught Petroyle slightly off guard and the order books are filling up. Deservedly so. It is a fabulous build that reflects the firm’s regular work as concours-level restorers. Starting with the basic ingredients of a regular E46 Touring bodyshell and a donor M3 from which all the mechanical parts were taken, Petroyle fastidiously recreated the original BMW concept, right down to detail touches like the small ducktail that sits between the pairs of pipes at the rear. 

The wider rear arches were tricky because they needed to be finished within the rear panel rather than creeping into the door skin. Unlike Audi with its RS models, BMW has always kept its rear doors totally stock on M3s; this creates a more abrupt wheelarch bulge that helps you ‘see the power’, according to current BMW M CEO Frank van Meel, although I’m sure the cost savings are a welcome side effect.

What you can’t see is that many of the fresh panels and some of the old ones have been crafted from carbonfibre. The front wings, boot floor, side sills and rear bumper are all made from the stuff, and it’s optional for things like the front bumper and roof (the rear quarter panels remain in steel as per the concept).

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Obviously this has benefits in terms of weight and keeping the handling balance as close to that of the coupe as possible, but Alvarez admits it was as much about fun and having the chance to work with a type of material they don’t encounter on their hitherto day-to-day work. Now that there are more Tourings in the pipeline, of course, it’s also more cost-effective to tool up and reproduce the panels.

Mechanically this car is very much stock, but with attention given to the areas that you would expect on any restoration of an E46. That largely means the rear axle carrier panel has been strengthened to prevent the well-documented cracking that originals suffer from. There has also been additional bracing to ensure that the Touring shell has the structural rigidity that you’d expect of an M car. Darragh Doyle, from Everything M-Power, has rebuilt the diff and Petroyle even has access to some zero-miles S54 engines if customers want that true, just-rolled-out-of-the-factory feeling. 

It’s finished with 18-inch rims because they are not only the better choice dynamically, but also match what was on the original. This car, the first, has deviated from the concept in terms of paint, but Alvarez was always going to finish the first example in Laguna Seca Blue, which is not only instantly redolent of this generation of M3 (along with Phoenix Yellow) but also his favourite colour. Inside, the luxurious leather trim is a deep shade of tan that instantly makes me think of Biscoff, because everything seems to be flavoured with the Belgian portmanteau at the moment. It’s the new salted caramel. 

This car has a totally original infotainment system that displays its data and mapping with a charming handful of pixels. It’s one of the main reasons this feels like such a step back in time. Naturally Petroyle will fit a modern Apple CarPlay/Android Auto compatible system in the space if customers want one and I can imagine that they will. However, there is something rather lovely about maintaining the illusion that this is a car that has been in existence for a quarter of a century.

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Twist the key and from cold you get the wonderful half-ring of orange and red lights around the rev-counter, reminding you to take it easy until the fluids have got some heat in them. Obviously I oblige and when you short-shift the S54 it’s almost shocking how subdued the soundtrack is. Combined with an exterior that is nicely subtle by modern standards, it is quite Q-car-like in its unobtrusiveness. It would certainly be undemanding to live with.

As the first miles pass, there are all sorts of familiar sensations from the controls, like the tall, flat surface of the floor-hinged throttle pedal that contrasts with the two small pedals hanging down to its left. The singular shape of the two rotary controls for the infotainment; they’re like mini power station cooling towers, rubberised and tipped on their side. Even the way the buttons on the steering wheel depress is distinctive.

As the oil comes up to temperature and you can extend the orange needle further round the grey dial, so the straight-six finds its voice. No doubt many people will fit some sort of M3 CSL-style carbon air-box to their Touring, but this one is stock and you really need to stretch the engine and that long throttle pedal to bring the soundtrack to life. 

There is a noticeable pick-up at 3000rpm and from there on up it is a smooth crescendo to the red line at 8000rpm. There isn’t a whip-crack response to every input, but because it breathes naturally you get a feeling of unfiltered connection to the engine at every part of the rev range. You can be absolutely certain from the sound and feel about how it’s going to behave with any given input.

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And it feels quick, too. Not in that instant punch way we have become used to, but in that heady, high-spinning power ramp that seems to stretch the world around you as you reach above 5000rpm. One of my favourite things is actually the Sport button, which has such a noticeable instant effect on the throttle map. 

I mentioned this to photographer Dean while he was in the passenger seat and said words to the effect of ‘watch this’ as I held a steady throttle and then pressed the button… at precisely the moment a pheasant hopped out of the hedge and I had to swerve quite violently to preserve life and bodywork. ‘&5*$%@ me! I didn’t expect that,’ said Dean, who hadn’t spotted the bird equivalent of a lemming and assumed the whole manoeuvre was a result of the small button in front of the gearlever.

In some ways the driving experience is a similar sort of throwback to that of the Evoluto 355 that I also drove this month (see Driven), with its naturally aspirated engine and manual gearbox. However, where that car has bigger wheels and tyres and a quicker rack, this E46 has obviously stuck faithfully to the grip profile of the original. Hence it takes me a couple of runs through a corner with Dean hiding in a verge to get my head out of 2026 and back to the turn of the millennium.

In essence everything happens much more slowly. No super-sharp turn-in and no danger of unhooking the rear with a mountain of torque at a twitch of the throttle. There is still decent grip, but you can now sling the car in with a fairly big steering input, then you wait for the weight transfer and apply plenty of throttle to help the rear, safe in the knowledge that on a dry road you have more than enough time to dial in any corrective lock.

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It’s a process of surprisingly big inputs and plenty of time to enjoy the process. It all feels very benign and laid-back but also incredibly involving. Perhaps the slightly quicker steering rack of the M3 CSL or E46 M3 CS would be nice, just to make the entry to tighter corners a bit more precise, but I’d happily stick with the 18-inch wheels and modest rubber for the fluidity they offer.

The more time you spend with Petroyle’s E46 M3 Touring, the more it seems insane that it wasn’t built by BMW. It is just so ridiculously well-rounded. When Kirsty and Phil meet beleaguered people searching for a new home, they always tell them that they are going to have to compromise. The detached, inner-city house that’s turn-key but with room for improvement, close to the beach and mountains, with a price that’s a third less than current market value, simply doesn’t exist. But in automotive terms, this is pretty close.

So, why didn’t the concept make it to production? Well, the story that will be recounted round the fireplace down the ages (children listening agog to grandpa’s fairy tales of cars with fantastical internal combustion engines) is that BMW did quietly carry out a bit of market research with the M3 Touring concept when it was built. A group of journalists was canvassed and the overwhelming reaction from them was more positive than the Swiss flag. The opinion was that the men and women from Munich should stop deliberating and just build it.

However, as any journalist will tell you, no one actually listens to our answer when we get asked for advice about car purchases. So BMW ran it up the flagpole with some M3 customers as well. On the face of it, an excellent idea. However, there is a potential issue in that people who have chosen to own a coupe or convertible are probably less likely to have need of an estate. 

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You wouldn’t ask a bachelor if he’d find a pram useful. And so it was that the reaction of the M3 customers was the opposite to that of the journalists. BMW sided with the group with the money and the Touring was never built. As Alvarez suggests, it might have been a rather different story if BMW had asked Audi RS4 Avant owners.

Anyway, through Petroyle, there is now a gateway into that alternate universe. Sadly the cost of entry isn’t inexpensive, with builds starting at around £130,000, but given the level of work and what some charge in the world of restomods, it seems entirely understandable. It’s an idea that’s got room for growth too, with not only the option for an SMG gearbox but also a CSL version that’s already in build complete with carbon roof and bucket seats. 

Alvarez has even talked about V8 and V10 engine swaps. Who knows, perhaps in a few years we’ll be looking at a world in which the E30, E36 and E90 generations all have the M3 Touring variants that perhaps should have existed from the start. 

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