Years after being acquired by BMW, Alpina is finally ready to be more than an aftermarket partner. It was all the way back in 2022 when BMW formally bought Alpina, but the deal still has not delivered any major changes at the Bavarian Motor Works's long-time aftermarket partner. That is going to change in a big way on Friday, however, when the newly-minted sub-brand finally unveils its first concept car, the Vision BMW Alpina, and previews its new positioning just below Rolls-Royce in the BMW portfolio.
A quick teaser put out by the company on Sunday shows a silhouette reflected on alpine mountainsides, accompanied by music rather than any sort of revealing engine note. The shape is unclear, but it seems to be either a large coupe or coupe-like sedan with a squared-off nose and a relatively large greenhouse. Given Alpina's history with both super-sedans and elegant grand tourers, either option would make sense to re-launch the sub-brand.
View Price on AmazonWe may not know what exactly the concept is, or what production cars it could spawn, but we have an idea. BMW Blog reports that the brand could be working on significantly tweaked variants of the current 7-Series and X7. These would be fairly expensive and extremely well-equipped cars—in line with the idea that Alpina's work would fight directly with Maybach and Bentley—and would be so heavily re-styled that they would carry different model designations.
Bmw does have some recent history with that sort of car, although it has exclusively been with very limited production models. Both the current M4 and most recent M8 have spawned limited-run cars, the 3.0 CSL and Skytop. If the company wanted its Alpina models to compete directly with Bentley, it could employ a similar strategy at higher volume to build particularly special cars on its existing platforms under the new badge. We should have a sense of whether or not that actually is the plan when the new concept is revealed on Friday.
Source: roadandtrack.com
