For lovers of hi-po German cars, there’s good news coming in 2019 as Alpina is ramping up its Australian activity, ready to unleash two of the most unlikely missiles you’ll find on our roads.
Like most young German engineering students, Burkard Bovensiepen was into cars and while he was working for his family’s typewriter business, Alpina, all he could think about was making his car go faster. The Munich-based student noticed the amount of empty space in the engine bay of his BMW 1500 at the same time as he realised it needed more power...
Individuality matters as mass market sameness turns Australia’s collective carpark into a seething mass of silver SUV sameness. So how can you stand out from the pack? With something subtle like the Alpina B4 S, of course.
If you need to get rid of almost $400,000 and want the automotive equivalent of a velvet sledgehammer, the Alpina B7 may be the limousine for you.
Photographers have snapped images of what is believed to be the upcoming Alpina XD7 at the Nurburgring in Germany, giving us an early preview of the tuning arm's take on BMW's largest SUV model. While little distinguishes this camouflaged prototype from the recently-revealed BMW X7, trainspotters will notice the (normally fake) intakes on each side of the front bumper are open, feeding air into a pair of intercoolers...
Alpina won't bring the XD4 high-riding coupe to Australia, but we will get the more practical XD3 – albeit with a twin-turbo engine in place of the quad-turbo offered in Europe. Offered with a quad-turbo (yes, quad) inline-six in left-hand drive markets, the XD4 makes 285kW of power and 770Nm of torque...
Alpina isn't in any hurry to adopt electrified powertrains, arguing its customers want big-capacity engines from their cars rather than plug-in hybrids or battery-electric vehicles. Speaking with media at an event in Melbourne this week, Andreas Bovensiepen, Alpina's CEO and son of the brand's founder, said its owners are still attached to old-fashioned characteristics in their cars...
With a small population and lots of carmakers – 50, to be precise – Australia is a tough place to launch a new car brand, even when that brand is a German icon with more than five decades of experience. Since officially launching locally two years ago, the team behind Alpina has sought to spread the word without creating an un-fulfillable rush...
