BMW will relaunch its recently purchased Alpina brand with upmarket designs that will sit between BMW’s high-performance M vehicles and Rolls-Royce, with Bentley and Mercedes’ upmarket Maybach models clearly in its sights.
Alpina was founded by Burkard Bovensiepen in 1965, with the company evolving from being a specialist independent BMW tuner to a low-volume manufacturer. BMW acquired the brand in 2022, completing the integration earlier this year as BMW Alpina within its luxury lineup. A new Alpina badge was revealed last month, but no plans on upcoming models had been revealed until now.
Speaking at the launch of the new all-electric BMW i3 in Munich, BMW’s development boss Joachim Post gave details of the positioning of Alpina in the BMW family, and the models it will launch first.
Answering questions from The Independent on how Alpina will sit alongside BMW’s M performance models Post said: “M is a philosophy about how a car drives – from the power, from the steering, from the control. I can only tell you, once you have driven them, this future [i3] M car will come on the electric side and you'll feel how that works.
“Alpina was always different in the past. M has been born on the racetrack, made for the roads from the sports level. And Alpina – we talk about speed, not sport. Speed and comfort and luxury, but completely different from a level which are the people who like M.”
Post confirmed that there would be more of a focus on bespoke finishes for Alpina models. “It’s also individualisation from interior levels,” he said.
Post didn’t rule out an Alpina version of the new i3, while confirming that an all-electric M version of the i3 would be coming. However, other models are a priority.
“We’ll bring Alpina from the top,” said Post. “We will start with the 7 Series and the X7.” He also confirmed that all-electric Alpinas are likely, saying: “We are technology open.”
The BMW 7 Series is expected to get a mid-life revamp later this year in line with the brand’s Neue Klasse strategy, with an Alpina model likely to follow that.
That means Alpina will follow a similar strategy to Mercedes’ Maybach brand, which ups the luxury on Mercedes top models including the S-Class, GLS, SL and all-electric EQS SUV.
However, it’s possible that we’ll see a hint at a standalone Alpina model before that. Rumours are circulating that there may be a new BMW Alpina model shown at the upmarket Concorso d’Eleganza Villa d-Este in Northern Italy in the middle of May.
