The BMW M3 Touring 24H spent June 10 through 14 parked inside the BMW M Clubhouse at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, the VIP hospitality area where it became the thing everyone wanted a photo with, barely a month removed from finishing fifth overall at the Nürburgring 24 Hours.
Naturally, BMW didn’t race the M3 Touring 24H at Le Mans. The car’s only competitive outing this season was the Nürburgring 24 Hours in May, where Schubert Motorsport entered it in the SPX class with Jens Klingmann, Connor de Phillippi, Neil Verhagen, and Ugo de Wilde sharing the wheel, and it out-paced one of BMW’s own M4 GT3 EVO entries on a flying lap. At La Sarthe it had a different job: sitting in the BMW M Clubhouse, the exclusive hospitality area reserved for VIP package holders, while the brand’s actual race cars did the work on track.
It started As a Joke
On April 1, 2025, BMW Motorsport posted a digital concept it called the M3 Touring GT3 Evo: full GT3 bodywork and a wing the size of a dining table, bolted to a five-door wagon. It was a prank, and BMW said so. The internet did not care. The post racked up more than 1.6 million views across BMW’s channels, and the replies stopped sounding like a joke was landing and started sounding like a demand.
BMW M Motorsport listened. Development started that September, and eight months later the car was real, renamed the M3 Touring 24H and built to the same FIA GT3 safety and performance specification as the M4 GT3 EVO it’s based on. For its Nürburgring qualifying sessions, the team wrapped the car in a livery printed with actual comments pulled from the original April Fools’ post, a self-aware touch that’s rare from a manufacturer motorsport department.
Worth noting: there’s also a separate, unrelated aftermarket conversion from German tuner Hakvoort sold under the name M3 GT3 Touring. That’s a road car built by a dealer, not the BMW Motorsport race car that showed up at Le Mans.
Underneath, It’s Mostly An M4 GT3 EVO
Strip away the long roofline and the M3 Touring 24H is mechanically the M4 GT3 EVO. It uses the same P58 race engine, a twin-turbocharged 3.0-liter inline-six with dry sump lubrication and a modified ram-air intake, sending up to 590 horsepower through an X-trac six-speed sequential gearbox to the rear wheels only. That’s worth pausing on: the street-going G81 M3 Touring comes exclusively with xDrive. The race car doesn’t bother with it.
Adapting the GT3 platform to a wagon body wasn’t a simple skin swap. The car is 200 millimeters longer and 32 millimeters taller than the M4 GT3 EVO, and the driver’s seating position had to move up 60 millimeters to clear the Touring’s roofline for safe entry and exit. BMW reused the M4 GT3 EVO’s front end and crash structure outright, built a new roll cage specific to the wagon shape, and added an extra passenger safeguard so the car can also work as a two-seat race taxi. The seats themselves come from the M4 GT4 EVO, not the GT3 car.
What Happens To It Now
The M3 Touring 24H isn’t going back to the Nordschleife. Its remaining 2026 calendar is all parade laps and static displays: Le Mans is done, the Spa 24 Hours and the Goodwood Festival of Speed are next in late June and July, followed by an appearance at the MotoGP round in Spielberg.
First published by https://www.bmwblog.com
Â
