The upcoming BMW M3 wagon, also known as the Touring, could take a Nurburgring lap record. Its one and only target: the Mercedes-AMG E63 S Wagon, which holds a time of 7:45.19 minutes. Along with several sets of spy shots from our own photographers and BMW itself, the M enthusiast community is rightly excited.

Unfortunately, the current generation 3 Series Wagon is overseas-only, a fact CarBuzz confirmed a few years ago at the 3 Series sedan launch event. Sales of the outgoing model simply weren't good enough for BMW North America to justify a successor. Also, crash tests for a separate body style are anything but cheap. The business case simply wasn't there, at least for the standard wagon.

The huge enthusiasm brought on by the M3 wagon, however, reportedly made BMW NA reconsider. BMW Blog has learned from an inside company source that bringing the all-powerful wagon to America was reconsidered.

"We revisited whether the car could be homologated for the U.S. market, but unfortunately, it was found to be cost prohibitive."

This is sad news, obviously, in this particular case, but there's a bigger picture that needs to be pointed out: BMW listens closely to its customers. An online petition and general internet "chatter" fully caught the company's attention. They knew in advance there was still likely no business case to justify the wagon, but at least they tried again.

Wagons, in general, are a dying breed in the US due to the increasing popularity of crossovers. As we all know, BMW has plenty of those to offer and most of them have a full-on M high-performance variant. The M3 wagon, insanely cool as it'll be, is far too niche. Still, it's not the ideal high-performance BMW wagon some were clamoring for because of two things: it'll be automatic and all-wheel drive-only. The most serious enthusiasts desire something RWD with a six-speed manual.

For those who aren't loyal to BMW or any other brand, there's another ultra-high performance wagon on sale here aside from the Mercedes, the Audi RS6 Avant. If you've got $100k or so on hand, both are amazing choices.