After 57 years, the highly respected small tuning firm is being acquired by the automaker, and after 2025 we can expect all future Alpina models to come straight from BMW.
- Small but highly respected German tuner Alpina has long built its own versions of BMWs.
- Now the firm is being absorbed into the BMW corporate universe after 57 years of an arm’s-length partnership.
- Development of new Alpina versions of BMWs will end at the company’s headquarters in Buchloe, Germany, after 2025, but that doesn’t mean the best isn’t yet to come for the brand under BMW ownership.
Alpina has long been a colorful exception to the size and scale of Germany’s large automakers. The tuner was born from an unlikely diversification from office equipment into performance parts for BMW. The symbiotic relationship grew to the point that Alpina was building its own versions of BMW models with the larger company’s consent, even getting early access to future cars to allow it to plan its variants. In the United States, Alpina has distributed models like the well-received XB7 through BMW, but in other countries the two companies were, nominally at least, in direct competition.
The article from Car & Driver goes more in depth
