Pinpointing the very first high-performance estate car is a lot like asking a roomful of theologians to agree on which is the one true religion: it can’t possibly result in any kind of accord (and that isn’t a joke about Hondas).
Somebody will put forward a considered and well-reasoned argument, only for it to be blasted away by a deafening chorus of dissent. There’ll be factions and splinter cells, and before too long devotees of one particular fast estate car and supporters of another will turn their backs on each other.
Best Fast Estate Cars: From BMW M5 Touring to Porsche Taycan Sport Turismo
- Origins of the Fast Estate Car
- E34 BMW M5 Touring
- Audi RS2 Avant
- Mercedes AMG C43, E55 and C63
- BMW M5 Touring and Audi RS6
- Mercedes-AMG E63 S
- Audi RS6 (again)
- Porsche Taycan Sport Turismo
- Honourable Mentions
Origins of the Fast Estate Car
There have been cars with long roofs, hatchback boots and bundles of power for several decades, but true performance estate cars have been around for no more than three. As far back as the 1930s, coach builders were dropping estate-type bodies on to Bentley and Rolls-Royce chassis, which were driven along by far more powerful engines than you’d have found in a typical production car. But they were never intended to be at all sporty to drive.
The same applies to several American station wagons from the 1950s and 1960s, cars that used thunderous V8 engines but were about as athletic in the bends as they were frugal at the fuel pump. And so it is with models such as the Subaru Legacy GT and Audi 200 Avant from the 1980s: both were reasonably quick and certainly both were estate cars, but in no way was either one truly a performance car.
E34 BMW M5 Touring
The very first high-performance estate car, then? That’ll be 1992’s BMW M5, in only its second generation and offered for the first time with what BMW referred to as a Touring body. Or to you and me, an estate. Before the model was put out to pasture in 1995 some 891 M5 Tourings had been built, all by hand. Any M-car is by definition a performance model and there can be no doubting its speed, because with a 3.8-litre straight-six engine that developed 335bhp, it’d be considered plenty brisk enough even today.
Audi RS2 Avant
Another car more commonly reckoned to be the originator of the breed is the Audi RS2 Avant. Yet it arrived in 1994 and so trailed the M5 by two full years. But while it trailed the M5 Touring to market, the RS2 did more to further the performance estate than any other.
This is because the RS2 was designed and built in collaboration with Porsche – at the time still a dedicated sports car manufacturer – and it boasted the kind of go-faster hardware no estate car ever had before, such as lowered and stiffened sports suspension, uprated Brembo brakes (complete with PORSCHE lettering on the callipers), the same wheels you’d have found on a 911 Turbo and sticky Dunlop tyres. Within the cabin there was even a pair of heavily bolstered Recaro seats.
The RS2 was actually a little less powerful than the M5, its turbocharged 2.2-litre five-cylinder engine good for no more than 311bhp. With four-wheel drive, however, the RS2 was far quicker off the line than the rear-driven M5 (and quicker to 30mph even than the game-changing McLaren F1 hypercar, according to Autocar magazine’s road test data).
Mercedes AMG C43, E55 and C63
Within three years Mercedes-Benz, the third corner in Germany’s upmarket triangle alongside Audi and BMW, had begun to play the performance estate car game. Rumbling V8 engines found their way into models like the C43, E55 and C63 – all created by then partly independent tuning firm AMG – and the matrimony was deemed to be so holy it’s been imitated countless times since.
Perhaps the crowning glory of this era of Mercedes AMG estates was the C63 of 2007, which paired an involving and surprisingly agile rear-drive chassis with a gloriously rev-happy 6.2-litre V8 that put out between 451bhp and 503bhp. The only fly in the ointment from an enthusiast’s perspective was the fact that the fastest C-class was only available with a seven-speed automatic gearbox.
If you wanted the more involving driving experience that comes from a manual gearbox, you would have to go for the C63’s main rival, the Audi RS4 Avant. This had first been offered with a twin-turbo V6, but by the time the B7 version arrived in 2006, Audi had switched to a naturally aspirated V8. This was almost as fabulous as the one fitted to the Mercedes, albeit not quite as powerful, delivering just 414bhp. It did have the advantage of a four-wheel-drive system, however.
