BMW Actually Built an M3 Touring GT3, and It’ll Race at the Nurburgring 24

On April Fools Day last year, BMW M posted photos on Instagram of a new factory GT3 car: an M3 Touring. It had a big wing and looked amazing, but it was sadly very, very fake. Now, most April Fools jokes from automakers tend to either be lame or leave a bad taste in your mouth. The idea of this wagon, though, that was cool. And the thing is, you can’t make a joke about building a wagon race car without having an adamant group repeatedly urging you to make it happen. That’s what BMW did.

Revealed today, the M3 Touring 24H, as its been dubbed, is a very real M3 GT3 race car and it will be racing at the Nurburgring 24 this year. According to BMW, this idea came about long before the M3 GT3 April Fools gag, with thoughts of a racing Touring starting just after the road car’s debut in 2022. When M did the April Fools joke, that’s when the public reaction made the team decide to actually build one.

The M3 Touring 24H is derived from the M3 Touring, but borrows nearly everything else from the M4 GT3 EVO. The Touring is about eight inches longer than the M4 and an inch taller when you include the rear wing. Still, M says the technical data for the coupe and Touring are identical.

Schubert Motorsport will campaign the car with four works drivers behind the wheel: Jens Klingmann, Ugo de Wilde, Connor De Phillippi, and Neil Verhagen. It will be in the Ring’s SPX class, which is the experimental category, while the M4 GT3s will run in SP9. And it won’t only run in the N24, as it’ll make its first appearance on track next weekend at the ‘Ring, and will also take part in the N24 qualifying races.

BMW M3 Touring GT3 Shooting in den BMW M Stuidos – Foto: Gruppe C Photography

Really, building something like this is amazing. It’s also fantastic that the initial livery is made up of comments from that April Fools Instagram post. There will be another special livery for the N24 when that rolls around. I’m just excited to see it on track next week, and my fingers are very crossed that it gets through all of these qualifying races unscathed. Spares have to be at a minimum for a unique car like this.