Alpina, the longstanding German tuning company responsible for building some of the coolest BMW-based race cars and road cars of the last 60 or so years, has been undergoing huge changes since 2022. Four years ago, BMW announced it had purchased the tuner brand, with plans to absorb it into the BMW Group conglomerate. Earlier this year, the transfer of ownership was finalized, and BMW even unveiled a revised logo for the newly formed subsidiary, simply called BMW Alpina.
In modern times, Alpina is best-known for building highly capable and highly usable versions of standard BMW models. It was sort of like BMW M’s more luxurious, quirkier cousin. It built cars that were quick, but also distinctly styled and awash with high-quality materials. For America, that meant cars like the B6, based on the 6-Series, the B7, based on the 7-Series, and the XB7, based on the X7 SUV.
Alpina has yet to reveal a new car since BMW acquired it, leading the industry to ponder what sorts of changes the execs in Bavaria had in store for the brand. In March, CEO Oliver Zipse positioned BMW Alpina as a brand that could sit between the standard BMW lineup and the Rolls-Royce ultra-luxury brand, which makes sense considering its recent history.
Now, thanks to this new concept, the car world finally has a good idea of where BMW is taking the Alpina brand. Called the Vision BMW Alpina, it’s a huge, V8-powered two-door coupe that’s as long as a Chrysler minivan.
I Can Get On Board With This
The Vision BMW Alpina feels like a greatest-hits mashup of BMW’s design history. The overall shape is very 8-Series, with the long nose and relatively short rear overhang. At 204.7 inches long, it’s about as long as a Chrysler Pacifica. The big, wide kidney grilles remind me of those found on that ultra-limited 3.0 CSL the company sold a few years back, while the pointy beak shape is inspired by the original B7 coupe from the late ’70s, which was based on the “sharknose” E24 6-Series. Naturally, the grille surrounds are illuminated in a specific warm tone “inspired by the first light over the Bavarian Alps,” according to BMW.
The headlight fixtures and vertical vents on either end of the fascia, meanwhile, feel pretty similar to the units found on the current 7-Series. The taillights, on the other hand, remind me a bit of the lights found on the back of the Z8 roadster from the early 2000s (and also kinda give me Genesis vibes, to be honest). The interior is pretty 7-Series-ish, too, with a head-up display going from A-pillar to A-pillar, a main infotainment screen, and a secondary screen for the passenger. There are physical controls made from crystal for stuff like the window switches, start-stop button, drive mode selector, and seat adjustment rockers. Despite being a drive-focused coupe, there’s quite a lot going on in the rear seating area:
Behind the rear console, a glass water bottle sits beside BMW ALPINA crystal glasses that rise on a self-deploying mechanism. Each glass is engraved with 20 deco-lines and features a sixdegree rim profile, held by concealed magnets and softly lit against the open-grain center console.
This is an Alpina, after all, and what Alpina wouldn’t be complete with a set of the company’s signature 20-spoke wheels? They’re present and accounted for here, measuring 22 inches up front and 23 inches in the rear. The Alpina themes continue along the sides of the car, where you’ll find “modernized” versions of Alpina’s iconic deco-line pattern painted under the clear coat. There are also four elliptical exhaust pipes out back, a standard feature of any modern Alpina.
What’s Under The Skin?
BMW is being pretty vague on powertrain details, saying only that the Vision BMW Alpina is powered by a V8 of some kind. There’s no mention of output, transmission, driven wheels, or possible hybrid tech onboard. If I had to guess, it’s probably hiding a version of the company’s widely used 4.4-liter twin-turbo V8, which is found in everything from the 7-Series, to the X7, to the limited Skytop coupe. Of course, in reality, there could be no engine, as this is just a concept. It’s equally likely the car is a rolling design buck with no drivetrain at all.
As for chassis dynamics, BMW does drop a hint on what to expect behind the wheel, name-dropping Alpina’s founder, Burkard Bovensiepen, in the process. From the release:
Burkard Bovensiepen understood something much of the automotive world has forgotten: a comfortable driver is a faster driver. That belief remains central to the Vision BMW ALPINA. Alpina offers Comfort+, a setting beyond the standard BMW comfort calibration that delivers a more supple, refined character, and it is retained here.
How likely is the Vision BMW Alpina for production? BMW doesn’t give any hints, saying only that it’s a one-of-one design that signals “a new era for BMW Alpina.” Towards the end of the release, the company mentions that the first Alpina production car to be released under this new ownership won’t be a coupe at all—it’ll be a version of the current 7-Series. So if the Vision does get greenlit, we probably won’t see it for a while.
Either way, relaunching the brand with a big, stately, comfortable, stylish coupe feels like the right move for Alpina, as it seems to fit the brand’s ethos well.
Top graphic image: BMW
Thank you for sharing! The 204.7-inch length gives it those massive, elegant grand-tourer proportions we rarely see anymore.
Thart’s not a head up display. That is just a display.
No new articles this weekend? Gotta look at this ugly piece of shit for 5 days on the front story. I guess I’ll take a few days off and try again late next week.
The van is not strangely long so what’s the deal, it’s a full size car
I like it, doubt I’d consider buying one though.
Someone needs to tell these luxury brands that plastic and glass rectangles mounted in prominent positions on the dash are NOT luxury features anymore. Time to wow people with something new and innovative. Screens are crap. How about small heads up projected display indicator or voice indicator for directions and a hideaway screen if absolutely necessary.
As with most modern BMWs decent proportions ruined by a a front end that feels like it’s compensating for something. And that god awful 4 spoke steering wheel…and that stupid trapezoidal screen.
Visiting my folks right now and borrowing my old man’s 2019 X5 which is the last of the using buttons for most operations, arguably what everyone says they want, and driving wise it’s really good for a mid size SUV but also it just makes me miss the BMW of yesteryear, it has so much pointless tech, and sooooo many buttons for features I doubt more than 2% of customers use or care about. Honestly it has so many buttons it actually almost makes me wish they’d buried a few more in the infotainment (crying.) if you could somehow get the v8 twin turbo drivetrain it has without most of the tacked on luxury features it would be a pretty incredible CUV. I haven’t driven a newer Mercedes but I have a suspicion they have a similar problem where they don’t know how to differentiate themselves or justify the prices they charge without lots of useless feature bloat because “regular” cars have gotten so good and the average luxury car buyer probably never cared that much about driving dynamics other than some straight line speed anyways.
The link to Z8 roadster shows just one post for the designer (RIP), i think the car deserve at least one article, it’s one of most beautiful BMWs.
All I see is this
A placeholder image?
the face is the same
Love the exterior, still can’t get past the neue classe dash and steering wheel.
It’s better than the new Jag. Low bars, faint praise, etc.
I want to hear Adrian’s verdict.
Not bad. Not bad at all. And this coming from someone who’s never been impressed with past Alpina models, no matter how much some would lose their shit over them.
This is so meh. Yet another reskinned 8 series. Classically good proportions but so forgettable.
Mazda called. They’d like THEIR concept car design back!… and while you’re at it, they’d like the VISION name back too…
https://cdn.motor1.com/images/mgl/r07EY/s3/mazda-vision-coupe-concept.webp
In profile, they look very close.. even the wheels. I prefer the MAZDA front end of course.
Damn, good catch!
That’s much better looking, especially the slimmer front
“while you’re at it, they’d like the VISION name back too…”
The BMW Vision EfficientDynamics concept, which presaged the i8, was released in 2009, 5 or 6 years before the Mazda RX-Vision and 3 or 4 years before the ‘Vision’ series of Gran Turismo cars.
How the fuck did the E31 8 Series managed to have such a slim front end and this thing has the frontal area of a Chevy Silverado?
I know pedestrian safety plays a part, but come on!
Apart from being absolutely lethal to pedestrians, it’s also because understanding of aerodynamics has come a long way – or rather, the influence it has on car design. Perhaps counterintuitively, higher, bluffer front ends are not necessarily bad for aerodynamics. Wedge shapes tend to generate a lot of lift, unless very carefully designed.
As beautiful as the old 8 and the Aston Martin Lagonda are, there’s no reason other than aesthetics to have cars that look like that, and overwhelming practical reasons not to.
I hear you, but this is a concept so aesthetics should be the #1 priority.
This car will never hit a pedestrian, won’t have to comply with any crash regulations and won’t be concerned with lift at high speeds. BMW could have made this to look amazing and it does, except from the front.
I disagree this has to be the new aero/safety normal because there are still plenty of examples of cars with slimmer front ends. The i8 and even the recently phased out 5 Series G30 come to mind. Not to mention current Porsches, Ferraris, Corvettes…
This is a dumb styling trend as seen in the latest Audi and (gasp) Jaguar concepts too. Brutalism in car design is popular and although I believe you it’s probably not as aerodynamics-killing as it looks, it’s definitely not the only way to do it.
This concept appears to be intended to look fairly close to cars that will actually be produced. If it were not, it’d have more leeway to ignore pedestrian safety and so on.
The i8 design is over 15 years old, and precedes the current pedestrian safety rules. The G30 does not have a lower nose, although it is styled very differently.
For the aero advantages, consider a front air dam and splitter combo. The air dam creates an area of high pressure above the splitter, while air rushes through below at low pressure; the differential creates a strong downward force on the splitter, while the dam also pushes air around the car in an efficient manner. That’s clearly what the bluff face and ‘chin’ on this concept is for.
And on a pedantic note, there is nothing brutalist about this design, though you might well call it brutal. Brutalism, from the French word ‘brut’, meaning raw, is about using materials in their plain state, and not covering up how things are made, or what they’re made of. It is often associated with blockiness and slabs of concrete, in buildings, but that isn’t universal, or inherent to brutalism. (Compare the Barbican Centre to the Southbank Centre and Royal Festival Hall; the latter does do the massive looming block of concrete thing, but the Barbican doesn’t. Both are Brutalist icons and incredible buildings, but very different styles.)
Mmmm, Baby! The rear and profile make up for the face. A V8 powered coupe as long as a Pacifica? Yes, please.
Just watched a Nature special on PBS about ichthyosaurs. Something here looks disturbingly familiar.