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For those of us who love the practicality of station wagons, BMW has built what may well be the ultimate appliance: the M5 Touring. The recipe is simple: take one 5-series wagon, plant Bimmer's 507-horsepower V10 in the engine bay, hook it to the 7-speed SMG, and infuse the whole shebang with the style, handling and attitude you've come to expect from a car sporting the "M" badge.

Only this time, the sub-5-second 0-60 time is associated with a car that will happily transport the wife, kids and associated luggage (maybe the family pooch, too) on whatever road trip you happen to dream up. We'd be dreaming up trips to vacation spots that are far away, with scenic, curvy roads connecting the origin and destinantion. Then again, a straight-through blast down I-95 to visit the Mouse would probably be fine, too. We're confident good time would be made.

Alas it's all a dream, because we're not scheduled to get The Practical Man's M5. Actually, with a sticker price of over ??67,000 -- the equivalent of $131,000 in the greenbacks -- it wouldn't make it into the average family's garage anyway. That doesn't mean it's not worth swooning over, though. Speaking as someone with the whole family unit + dogs at home, staring at pictures of this thing is the grown-up equivalent of the Countach poster I had on my bedroom wall back when being a grown-up was the furthest thing from my mind.

Press release after the jump.

Source: [url=http://www.autoblog.com/2007/03/01/geneva-preview-bmw-shows-off-m5-touring/]Autoblog[/url]