Seemingly out of nowhere, the BMW Group introduced in March 2022 that it was increasing its portfolio by buying the ALPINA model title. The stunning transaction didn’t have an effect on the prevailing settlement between the 2 firms, because the five-year deal signed in late 2020 remained unchanged. Nevertheless, with December 31 quick approaching, time is sort of up.
However how did the BMW Group find yourself shopping for the area of interest automaker within the first place? Andreas Bovensiepen, son of the late ALPINA founder Burkard Bovensiepen, explains in an interview with Hagerty the way it all unfolded. Talking with journalist Henry Catchpole, the person in cost on the Buchloe-based firm remembers that preliminary talks date again to 2021.
“BMW talked to us in 2021 and stated: ‘Okay, the longer term goes electrical. Will probably be way more electrical. Will probably be way more troublesome sooner or later for everyone to earn good cash as a result of every little thing will get extra software program engineered.
It will get extra complicated and the laws get an increasing number of strict. If it’s pedestrians, if it’s some supervising methods within the automobile. However you guys have a very cool model with a fantastic historical past and we might have an interest to purchase your model.’”
So there you might have it: BMW approached ALPINA, not the opposite means round. Andreas finally determined to half with the model title whereas maintaining the corporate underneath the ALPINA Traditional banner. It now caters to roughly 40,000 surviving vehicles out of roughly 60,000 autos in-built 60 years. Since 1983, ALPINA has been licensed as an automaker by Germany’s Federal Ministry of Transport (BMV).
The choice to let go of the model title forward of an electrical future does make sense. In 2021, Andreas instructed our sister web site Bimmer At the moment that its customers simply weren’t interested in EVs:
“We carried out a buyer survey as regards to hybrid and EV. Our clients presently really feel no demand for battery-electric fashions.”
However the BMW Group sees issues in another way. Though it hasn’t detailed its plans for the ALPINA title from 2026 onward, experiences are intensifying about electrical fashions. The 7 Sequence “G70” facelift coming subsequent yr will reportedly spawn an ALPINA “G72” version with an i7 70 xDrive. That’s not all. The second-generation X7 (“G67”), due in 2027, is rumored to get an ALPINA-badged “G69” variant with an iX7 100 xDrive electrical vary topper.
There’ll nonetheless be BMWs with an ALPINA contact from the Bovensiepen brothers. Andreas and Florian have based a separate firm, Bovensiepen Vehicle, to construct low-volume coachbuilt vehicles. It’s unclear whether or not they’ll base all of them on BMWs, however the first is a Zagato-designed coupe that really began out as an M4 Convertible.
Video: Hagerty / YouTube
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