Are you a ‘want your cake and eat it too’ kind of person? If so, you probably appreciate performance wagons. And why not? They offer practicality, are (generally) much more affordable than sports cars, and can literally fly under the radar. With their numbers dwindling in the open market, it’s always a great time to look at one from our past. Enter the E39 Touring.
There were several configurations that the 5-series Touring was available in over the years, but the ‘big stick’ was the 540i with its 286 horsepower M62. Sure, the N54-equipped E61 was faster and available as a manual. But if you wanted a really classic BMW setup, the 540iT was about as good as it got for US-bound BMW wagons. As a result, many have been turned up by their owners and drafted into M5 clones. Such is the case here, with this Sienna Red Metallic E39 sporting a host of Dinan bits, E39 M5 bits, and a 6-speed manual swap for good measure.