Bmw Wagon V12

But before the McLaren F1's S70 V12 was given the green light for supercar duties, it was tested in a somewhat unusual prototype vehicle: the BMW E34 M5 Wagon. That's right. A station wagon.

A BMW M5 Wagon Was Used To Test The McLaren F1's V12 An E34 M5 Touring was the vehicle of choice to stretch the legs of the McLaren F1-powering S70/2 engine, it's emerged Jason Craig Updated: 11. Over 600 horsepower. And a naturally aspirated V12 sourced from BMW.

Of course, that engine needed to be tested, so BMW stuffed it into the only other logical place it should go: An E34 M5 wagon. With fewer big vehicles in its lineup than we see today, BMW had scant options for real-world testing the big V12 engine. However, the BMW M5 Wagon worked perfectly, and the chassis became the test bed for the McLaren F1 engine.

During the development phase of the McLaren F1 in the early 1990s, BMW used an M5 Touring as a test vehicle for the supercar's 618. The public has never seen this 618-horsepower wagon, which was described by McLaren's former road car director as "an outrageous thing.". Secretly stored for decades this BMW M5 was an unlikely prototype for the 6.1.

And while many a development car ultimately winds up meeting the crusher, Clark said the V12-powered M5 wagon is still around, tucked away with other secret prototypes in a BMW facility somewhere. If you're a car enthusiast, you probably know that the McLaren F1 had a BMW-built V12 engine. But how did they test this engine? They did what any sane person would do- stuff it into an E34 M5 Wagon.

The Collecting Cars podcast, hosted by Chris Harris from Top Gear, found this out while speaking to David Clark last month, who was director of McLaren road and race vehicles from 1994 to 1998. The BMW secret you didn't know about. In this video I will tell you about a wild prototype of a station wagon made by BMW.

Its feature was a 6.1.