BROTHERS IN CHARMS

BMW's long-awaited M3 Touring is an improbable performance car with masses of everyday appeal- a bit like the V8 Range Rover Sport. Richard Lane discovers what unites - and divides - them in the real world

- Richard Lane

Had you in 1986 suggested that a BMW M3 and a Range Rover could be considered tools for the same job, you would have been jeered off the Autocar premises and on the receiving end of a call from occupational health.

This was the year BMW presented its fizzing new lightweight homologation coupé to a world in which showroom-fresh Range Rovers were still, amazingly, largely unchanged from the Spen King-designed haute pathfinders that went on sale back when man first landed on the moon. It was an era when both vehicles still existed in their primordial, archetypal forms and weren't so much chalk and cheese as chemically pure calcium carbonate and room-temperature Époisses of eye-watering funk. The fantasy two-car garage we nerds love to concoct was invented precisely to celebrate such diversity.

But as we all know, Planet Car has become somewhat non-conformist since the mid-1980s. Look at Lotus, which not only now builds an SUV but builds it in Wuhan. The 2.4-tonne Eletre also happens to be electric. The rollercoaster has led us to a reality where suggesting that an M3 and a Range Rover might be cross-shopped is no longer met with side-eye and a P45. Instead, you may get asked by the editor to take the cars away and find out if this thinking stacks up in reality. Which is how we've ended up in Snowdonia with 1000bhp and £200,000 of apparently disparate metal that will nevertheless tempt much the same clientele.

You do, of course, wonder how it's come to this. The clue is in the names: M3 Touring and Range Rover Sport. But even then, scepticism is natural.