I have been a fan of sport wagons – not to be confused with station wagons – for a number of years. Station wagons haul people and stuff. Sport wagons are sporty sedans with taller trunks.

BMW’s 325i wagon, when outfitted with the Sport Package, fits the sport wagon definition very well. This option adds handsome 17 x 8.0 alloy wheels and performance tires, a sport suspension, leather sport steering wheel, and adjustable front sport seats for $1,400. It’s money well spent when you consider the effect it has on the vehicle. At once, the little wagon gets a stronger, more focused personality. The stance is tougher, the wheels fill their arches more completely. The seats add style and support, while the thick steering wheel feels more substantial and comfortable than the standard item.

Perhaps it’s the car’s size, but the 3 Series wagon feels no larger than the coupe, yet offers more flexibility when carrying a load. It’s not a cargo hauler by any means – get a Passat wagon if you want a reasonably sporty German car that can carry a load – but you won’t have to leave anything by the side of the road for lack of luggage space. As long as you don’t have rear seat passengers, that is. The cargo area is taller than the sedan’s, but no longer, making it necessary to fold the rear seats to increase cargo room appreciably. Besides, rear leg room is at a premium, unless the front seat passengers cooperate and move their seats up slightly, so you probably won’t have to worry about carrying rear seat passengers.

On the road, the 325i sport wagon is extremely competent. The ride is firm yet compliant, with perceived roughness more a measure of the combination of sound and firm damper control than unreasonable impact harshness. The truth is, this wagon rode surprisingly well over bumps and ruts than expected, never giving the impression that anything less than miles of bad roads would become tiring.

Handling is precise and secure, rain or shine, and helped by the consistent weighting of the steering, accelerator, clutch and brake. Few automakers pay as close attention to this control-feel symmetry as BMW, and it shows. It may seem a bit extreme, but the feeling of confidence it imparts is exemplary. The only sore point was the floor-hinged accelerator pedal, which made throttle applications awkward at times.

The as-driven price for the car we drove was $37,165, a sizeable amount of money. We’d keep the cold weather package (heated front seat, headlight washers, ski bag) and bi-xenon headlights ($700), but eliminate the extra-cost metallic paint ($475), power glass moonroof ($1,050), power front seats with memory ($945) and on-board computer ($300). With destination charge, this would lower the price to $34,395. That’s still a lot of money, despite the blue and white spinning propeller badge on the nose. From this vantage point, I can say this is not unreasonable in this segment, but I might feel differently when it came time to sign on the dotted line.