It started as a joke. On April 1, 2025, BMW Motorsport posted a concept they called the “M3 Touring GT3 Evo” — a five-door wagon with a massive rear wing, full GT3 bodywork, and a face so earnest that half the internet immediately believed it. They weren’t supposed to. It was a gag. BMW confirmed as much. Then something inconvenient happened: the video racked up over 1.6 million views across BMW’s social channels, and the comment section looked less like mockery and more like a petition. BMW M Motorsport listened. Within months, the project was real. That car — now officially called the BMW M3 Touring 24H — has just dropped its final livery ahead of its biggest test yet: the 24 Hours of Nürburgring on May 16-17.
The Most Exciting BMW Racing Car In Decades
The M3 Touring 24H is not a widebody conversion or a show car with race-spec stickers. Engineers built it to the same safety and performance specifications as the M4 GT3 EVO, using the P58 race engine with dry sump lubrication, a modified ram-air intake, and a twin-turbocharged exhaust system identical to the GT3 coupe. The suspension geometry and chassis components carry over directly from the M4 GT3 EVO as well.
What changed is the body. BMW M Motorsport built an entirely new carbon fiber-reinforced plastic body around the Touring shape, including faux rear doors (since racing cars don’t need them), shorter front doors, and a rear wing that extends further back than on the coupe to compensate for the aerodynamic drag the wagon roofline introduces. The driver’s seat had to move up 60 millimeters compared to the GT3 coupe to accommodate safe entry and exit — a small concession to the body’s proportions.
The result is a car that is 200 millimeters longer and 32 millimeters taller than the M4 GT3 EVO, but otherwise technically identical. Up to 590 horsepower from the 3.0-liter inline-six, routed through an X-trac six-speed sequential gearbox to the rear wheels only. The street M3 Touring comes exclusively with xDrive. The race version does not.
Development started in September 2025. The entire project — from approval to race-ready car — took eight months. That’s fast for anything in motorsport, and it was only possible because the M4 GT3 EVO platform was already sorted.
The New Livery
For its qualifying rounds, the car wore a livery printed with actual social media comments from the original April Fools’ post — a nice bit of self-awareness from a team that knows exactly why this car exists.
The race livery is different. BMW revealed it through what appears to be an AI-generated video (make of that what you will), showing the car peeling away its qualifying wrap to reveal the final look underneath. It’s heavily black through the center, with M GmbH colors — yellow, red, and white — concentrated toward the rear. Shell is the prominent sponsor. At the front, the daytime running lights and kidney grille surround glow in yellow, which BMW says will help with identification during the overnight hours when the Nürburgring gets genuinely dark and genuinely chaotic.
It’s a strong look. Busy toward the back, but the yellow lighting up front gives the car something distinctive to latch onto at 3am when you’re trying to spot it through a fence.
The Drive Lineup
Schubert Motorsport runs the car, and the four-driver lineup is all BMW M works: Jens Klingmann, Ugo de Wilde, Connor De Phillippi, and Neil Verhagen. Klingmann has been involved since early in the project and has made no secret of his enthusiasm for it.
The M3 Touring 24H will not compete in SP9 against the main GT3 field. It runs in the SPX class, which is where the Nürburgring 24-hour organizers put experimental and non-homologated cars that don’t fit neatly into existing categories. That keeps it out of direct competition with the three M4 GT3 EVO entries — two from ROWE Racing chasing overall victory, and one from Schubert running alongside the Touring. Also on the grid: at least two BMW Z4 GT3s from private teams, which deserve mention if only because their naturally aspirated V8 sound is going to stand out considerably in a field full of turbocharged inline-sixes.
Running in SPX means the Touring won’t be on the overall leaderboard in any meaningful way. Whether it can hold GT3 pace is another question. In general, the SPX classification doesn’t necessarily imply slower — the car has the same engine, the same gearbox, the same suspension as the car BMW sends to Le Mans and Daytona. It just happens to have a roof that goes further back.
