It’s June and you know what that means, we’ve finally entered the month when BMW will unwrap the M3 Touring. Contrary to the E46 concept from 22 years ago, the G81 will be sold to the public. Even though the super wagon won’t celebrate its official debut until the Goodwood Festival of Speed, pre-production is already well underway.
A new teaser video goes behind the scenes at the Munich plant in Germany where the M3 Touring is calling home. The body shop has no fewer than 1,200 robots that join a whopping 400 individual parts into one body by applying 6,000 spot welds using around 80 meters of adhesive joints. Although we’ve seen our fair share of footage from within a car factory, it’s always mesmerizing to watch how robots do the hard work.
Each pre-production car undergoes 1,700 additional measurements to guarantee optimal body geometry. It’s fascinating to see the car being put together panel by panel. The paint shop has its work cut out for it as about 950 bodies are sent there on a daily basis. The M3 Touring highlighted in the video has its body inspected by hand.
BMW also shows how the carbon bucket seats are being put together, complete with the illuminated M3 logo below the headrests. We then get to observe the so-called marriage, which is a term used in the industry for when the powertrain meets the body. The German luxury brand points out it’s the most difficult part of the whole assembly process.
The speedy wagon then received the M-specific front and rear bumpers along with the vintage Motorsport logo to mark 50 years of the M division. We also see the skilled technicians as they install the quad exhaust setup, which will soon trickle down to M performance cars as well. The last step of the assembly process is to install the wheels with Michelin Pilot Sport 4 S tires.
After about eight hours, the M3 Touring in an Individual Frozen Black metallic paint then enters the next phase by receiving the necessary headlight and chassis adjustments. The inline-six engine is then fired up as the car is put on a roller test stand where the brakes, gears, and acceleration are monitored. The final task is to fully camouflage the car before heading out for further testing.
Compared to previous teasers showing the G81’s interior, you can tell this is a closer-to-production prototype since it has the iDrive 8. It has already been installed on the 3 Series LCI and on the i3 Sedan available in China.
The last part of the video hints at a fast lap around the Nürburgring, which leads us to believe the M3 Touring will be crowned as the fastest production wagon around the Green Hell.
Source: BMW M / YouTube
