It may be exactly what BMW thinks it isA sneak peek at the 5 Series Gran Turismo—absolutely no one at BMW is wild about the name except for the marketing geek who dreamed it up, and that poor soul may already have been banished to xDrivePutYourNameHere3.0 purgatory—reveals it for what it is: the end of the 5 Series Sport Wagon.
The 5 Series Gran Turismo may spell the end of the 5 Series wagon.It’s also going to be the most expensive, top-of-the-line 5 Series you can buy.
But—well, how shall I put this? The damn thing is purely sumptuous. Now, I’m not talking about the exterior, although that’s good-looking enough, at least to these jaded eyes. Certainly it will please people who think SUVs and crossovers are acceptable vehicle designs. And certainly it makes more sense to people like me who always smear mud on their pants when climbing up into, or descending from, an X5 or an X3.
I’m thinking instead of the luxurious innards of the car—and let’s emphasize that word
car. There’s nothing truck-like about the new wagon. . . or wagonette. . . or whatever. When Missus Soccer Mom loads up the car with gremlins for her daily round of shagging groceries, laundry, and reloading supplies, she can raise the seat to Hell Mama height to do battle with the SUV brigades, without the conspicuous shame of the Hummer Housewives. And she can bask in a truly stunning interior, especially at night, when the soft ambient LED lighting makes it seem that she’s piloting a magic carpet through fairyland.
Costco run: The rear hatch yawns and the rear seats fold forward to provide plenty of room for fertilizer.If the kids are on steroids, it will all work out, because the rear-seat space is somewhere between the short- and long-wheelbase 7 Series; you can in fact order the splendid adjustable rear seating that separates the siblings to keep them from killing each other. Once they are immersed in their videos, of course, you just have to toss food and Ritalin to them every few hundred miles.
And those miles will fly. Handling? Performance? I think at this point, with BMW’s experience at making 7 Series sedans and X5/X6 trucks get up and dance like ravers on Ecstasy, we can assume that the 5GT (for short) will move like a getaway car, especially if they tie its V8 to the new eight-speed automatic. Offered first in conventional form, the
FünferWagen will no doubt get xDrive AWD components in short order, once BMW is assured that buyers will see it as a new species and not some kind of mutant X5.
The lower rear “trunk” door is handy for luggage or loading in bad weather.I don’t know what we’ll hear from the BMW suits who keep telling us that hatchbacks won’t sell in America, because the hatch on the 5GT is the size of a West Texas barn door. But it’s kind of a Dutch door, because you can open just the bottom part to slide in a coffin. . . or unpack the luggage just for tonight on a fast Continental dash to Cannes. I am not sure this rig will hold all the gear required by a four-man crew on the AlCan Winter Rally, but I’d be happy to find out.
Meanwhile, there remains that embarrassing problem of nomenclature. Gran Turismo? A true GT car carries two people in luxurious style for a fast weekend to the coast (any coast); a GT car is a sports car, with at least some of the limitations of that genre: room for just two, pack light, just a bottle or two of Moët instead of a case. The notion that you can go just as fast in even more opulent comfort and make it two couples instead of one is just a sin; it is, in a 21st-century way, a return to the values of yesteryear: a fast, fast, very fast car that handles like Billy-be-damned—but which has a practical side that allows it to be your one and only automobile.
Need a better name than 5 Series Gran Turismo? I say they ought to call it a Bavaria.
—Satch Carlson 
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