New BMW M5 Touring beaten in drag race despite 717‑hp hybrid

BMW’s new M5 Touring is the kind of car that looks like it should flatten almost anything with a license plate. It has a twin-turbo V8, a plug-in hybrid system, 717 hp, and all-wheel drive. But this week a drag race showed the awkward truth — the smaller BMW M3 CS Touring got down the quarter-mile first. That doesn’t mean the M5 is slow. It means weight still wins arguments that horsepower alone can’t. (Autoblog, May 12, 2026; BMW M5 Touring press materials; BMW M3 CS Touring materials.) ### What actually happened in the race? Autoblog highlighted a Carwow drag race that put the BMW M5 Touring against the BMW M3 CS Touring, and the result was simple: the M3 CS Touring crossed first despite giving away a huge chunk of peak power. The surprise wasn’t that the M3 is quick — everyone expected that. The surprise was that BMW’s biggest, newest super-wagon still couldn’t brute-force its way past physics. (Autoblog, May 12, 2026.) ### Why didn’t 717 hp save the M5? Because the M5 Touring is carrying a lot more car. BMW’s M5 Touring pairs a 4.4-liter V8 with an electric motor for 717 hp and 738 lb-ft, plus a short electric-only range of about 25 miles in U.S. spec. The catch is mass — BMW’s own U.S. materials put the wagon at roughly 5,530 pounds, which is enormous for something trying to win a standing-start sprint. (BMW Group PressClub USA, Aug. 15, 2024; BMW USA M5 Touring page.) ### What does the M3 CS Touring have going for it? Less weight, basically, and a simpler job. The M3 CS Touring uses a 3.0-liter twin-turbo inline-six with 550 metric horsepower — about 543 hp — and BMW quotes 0-100 km/h in 3.5 seconds with a 300 km/h top speed when equipped accordingly. It still has xDrive, still launches hard, and still gives you wagon practicality, but it doesn’t drag around the hybrid hardware and extra bulk the M5 does. (BMW M M3 CS Touring page; BMW Group global press kit, Jan. 30, 2025.) ### Is this just a drag-race party trick? Not really. Drag races exaggerate certain traits, but they’re useful because they expose the basic tradeoff in one clean number: power-to-weight. The M5 makes more power and more torque, and on a fast road it brings a broader, more luxurious kind of speed. But from a stop, every extra pound is like asking the engine to carry a backpack full of bricks. The hybrid punch helps. It just doesn’t erase the backpack. ### So is the M5 Touring a bad performance car? No — that would be the wrong lesson. The M5 Touring exists because BMW wanted one car to do everything: family hauling, long-distance comfort, electric commuting, and absurd pace. That formula is why it’s so interesting in the first place. But “do everything” cars usually pay somewhere, and here the bill shows up on the scale. ### Why is the timing interesting right now? Because BMW is already testing an updated M5. Spy shots published on May 13 show a heavily camouflaged facelift prototype at the Nürburgring, with the broad assumption that the hybrid V8 setup stays in place while the styling changes around it. So the straight-line debate around this generation isn’t going away — if anything, BMW now has to prove it can sharpen the package without losing the wagon’s whole reason to exist. (The Supercar Blog, May 13, 2026; Motor1 spy report.) ### What’s the real takeaway? The M5 Touring is a monster, but it’s a very modern monster — electrified, practical, and heavy. The M3 CS Touring is the cleaner performance tool. This race just made that difference impossible to ignore.