There was a clear moral victor the last time we staged a three-way estate car contest. While the Alpina B3 was the actual winner and the BMW M3 the most exciting car of the bunch, it was the M340i that emerged with its head held highest. It was only a bit slower than the others and not much less fun to drive, but altogether better as a family car.
All that for two-thirds of the money. Should it have won outright? Maybe. Here was an attractive high-performance wagon that was far less costly to run, and way better suited to the traditional estate car use case. I mean, would your partner and kids honestly be as tolerant as you of the M3’s jarring ride? And would you really chuck an old carpet in the Alpina’s beautifully trimmed cargo bay and set off for the tip?
That was two and a half years ago and the M340i xDrive Touring has been one of our favourite sporting family cars ever since. But now there is a new contender, and having lived with one these last couple of months, I know how good it is. This Audi S5 Avant is my current long-term test car, and the day it turned up I knew this comparison had to be made. And without delay – before the end of this year, the current 3 Series will go out of production to make way for the eighth-generation G50 model.
But what’s this? In amongst those sleek German silhouettes there is a third car, blockier, more upright and altogether more Nordic. We’ve brought this Volvo V60 T8 along because not everybody inclines towards the obvious choice. Whether it holds more than just iconoclast appeal remains to be seen. For a certain sort of buyer and for reasons we will come to, though, it actually is the obvious choice.
