A partially camouflaged BMW i3 Touring has been caught on video lapping the Nürburgring. The most telling detail isn’t anything the prototype added. It’s the small button that appears to have gone missing from the tailgate.
For decades, a BMW Touring owner could pop the rear glass on its own and drop a grocery bag in without swinging up the whole hatch. It was the kind of quiet engineering that made the long roof feel like a BMW and not just a sedan with a box bolted on.
The 5 Series and i5 Touring already lost it. The i3 Touring prototype looks set to follow.
When Motor1 asked BMW why the feature vanished from the 5 Series, the company didn’t say cost. It said aerodynamics. On an electric car, where every bit of drag costs range, that answer is plausible, but it’s also the most convenient one available.
The roof tells a similar story. The spied car wears a fixed panoramic glass top, which is standard on the i3 sedan and likely to carry over. The outgoing 3 Series Touring offered a section that slid open, and this one doesn’t.
None of this means BMW is giving up on the wagon. While most of the industry has thrown its weight behind crossovers, Munich is building a second electric Touring after the i5. It’s putting this one on the Neue Klasse architecture that underpins its entire electric future.
Up front, the prototype appears to change little from the i3 sedan. The real work sits behind the B-pillars, where a longer roofline runs back to a more practical tailgate. The sedan’s 420-liter trunk gives way to something larger, and the 31-liter front storage compartment should carry over unchanged.
Inside, expect the sedan’s playbook: a large center screen, a pillar-to-pillar projection across the base of the windshield, and fewer physical controls. The rotary iDrive dial that has lived between BMW front seats for a generation won’t be there.
Count the losses. Separate rear glass, opening roof, center console knob, all gone. BMW is preserving the Touring silhouette while shaving away the hardware that once made owners defend it at dinner parties.
The trade is speed and efficiency, and BMW M is expected to supply plenty of the former. An i3 M60 Touring should arrive first, mirroring the sedan already revealed. A full electric M3 Touring with four motors is a possibility, though nothing is confirmed.
Then there’s the parallel track. A combustion 3 Series Touring could follow later this decade, looking nearly identical while sharing almost nothing underneath. BMW has confirmed the i3 Touring rides on Neue Klasse and will be built in Munich.
A gas-powered sibling would stay on the older CLAR platform and come out of Dingolfing alongside the sedan. Two cars, two factories, one face. BMW is hedging, and doing it in plain sight.
The public reveal is expected in 2027, the same year the i5 Touring gets a facelift to bring it into the Neue Klasse fold.
What BMW hasn’t said is where these wagons will be sold. In the United States, the only BMW Touring on offer today is the M5, and it is far from cheap. American buyers who have spent years asking for a sensible long roof from Munich are still waiting for an answer.
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