Overview

Since 1990, the BMW 5 Series Touring has offered estate car buyers a winning combination of luxury, practicality and a healthy shot of driver appeal. Despite the engine range contracting in 2023, you can still buy a petrol, diesel or plug-in hybrid 5 Series Touring with rear- or four-wheel drive. That’s still an awful lot of choice.

What you can’t buy these days is a six-cylinder diesel, high-power four-cylinder petrol or a V8. You can’t have a BMW M5 Touring in this generation either, a shame given the availability of the smaller BMW M3 Touring. Those looking for a larger M badged family conveyance are therefore best served by the BMW X5 M.

Rivals for the core of the 5 Series Touring range are far easier to pick out. For a start there’s the obvious German competition in the Audi A6 Avant and Mercedes E-Class Estate, with the Volvo V90 providing a Scandinavian alternative. Of course, there’s also all manner of SUVs you could pick instead including the Audi Q7, aforementioned X5, Mercedes GLE and Volvo XC90.

Although the 5 Series Touring isn’t quite as capacious as some of these alternatives, it has a few neat features that make living with one even easier. It also has one of the most user friendly and well-made interiors for the money, with infotainment that won’t make you want to put your fist through the dashboard. As overdramatic as that sounds, it’s no guarantee these days.

To find out exactly how good the 5 Series Touring is at being an executive estate, keep reading our exceptionally thorough review. We’ll cover what it’s like to drive, how much stuff you can fit in it and what it’ll cost you to run. We’ll even let you know where it scores over rivals and whether you should buy one.