BMW Car

This month the second part of our celebrations marking 50-years of BMW M takes us into the 1980s, an undeniably iconic period for the brand which saw it give birth to (amongst other models) the evergreen E30 M3, while also making historic achievements on the racetrack, p41. If you missed the first part of our consecutive series of features focusing on a decade of BMW M history at a time then the May 2022 issue, covering the 1970s, can be purchased as a Back Issue – p78. And don’t miss the next instalment – the 1990s, where we revisit the period when BMW Motorsport split with BMW M as we know it today to concentrate on road cars while BMW Motorsport did its thing on track in style. Away from…

BMW has enjoyed a fruitful relationship with the Alpina brand for over half a century, now it has purchased the Buchloe manufacturer officially making it part of the BMW Group. Founded in 1965, Alpina was active in BMW tuning and motorsport from the 1960s, it began manufacturing passenger BMWs in 1978. In 1983 Alpina was recognised as an official automotive manufacturer with the German Federal Motor Transport Authority, today the Bavarian firm, owned by the Bovensiepen family, employs around 300 people and in 2021 it produced 2,000 vehicles. Interestingly 2021 was the most successful year in the history of Alpina, which is based in the Ostallgäu district of Bavaria. News came a few weeks ago that the BMW Group had secured the rights to the Alpina name in an agreement…

BMW Group is deepening its involvement in the field of sustainable manufacturing of vehicle components made from natural materials. BMW i Ventures, BMW's venture capital firm, has announced that it is investing in Swiss company, Bcomp, the leading manufacturer of high-performance composites made from natural fibres. The move follows the two firms working together on BMW M's M4 GT4 racing car. Further collaborations are muted with the aim of using a higher proportion of renewable raw materials for components in future BMW vehicles. Bcomp’s cutting-edge solutions were first used by BMW M in Formula E during 2019. The flax cooling shaft on the iFE.20 made it the first BMW racing car with parts constructed from – as odd as it sounds – renewable plant fibres. Bcomp-developed 'powerRibs' and 'ampliTex' reinforcement solutions…

Photography: Jason Dodd There’s a lot to be said for being understated. Still waters run deep, as the old saying goes, and it’s as true in the automotive sphere as anywhere else that what you see isn’t necessarily what you get – it sometimes takes a keen eye or an investigative demeanour to reveal the full story. Picture yourself in a dark, smoky dive bar in a hick town on a windy Friday night – the characters who’ll immediately catch your attention are the drunk office girls caterwauling around the jukebox or the frat boys slamming back thimbles of moonshine, but it’s the guy sitting alone at the bar that you need to watch out for. The one in the cowboy hat, coolly sipping neat bourbon and eyeballing everybody in…

There’s been a lot of weeping and wailing in my social media feeds of late and I’m not just talking about the global situation where it looks like we’re all going to be heading to hell in a handcart. No, amongst the important stuff there’s been a thread of concern about BMW’s purchase of Alpina with many wondering what will become of the Buchloe-based concern.It seems that many are worried that the absorption of Alpina into the BMW portfolio will inevitably lead to a dilution of the Alpina brand and the spectre of seeing a 2 Series Gran Coupé ‘Alpina Edition’ is, indeed, a worrying one. Many argue that BMW already has form for this and point to the dilution of the M brand with virtually every model in the…

I’ve been musing recently about what the future holds for smaller, shall we say more boutique car manufacturers in the face of everincreasing electrification. I’m thinking of brands like Atom, Caterham Morgan and the like. What might their products look like, and will legislation create pockets within which they can thrive, or at a basic level even survive? Most specifically I wondered what all this would mean for my favourite brand of all, Alpina. Before I managed to put pen to paper, or fingertip to keys, I read in the news that BMW had actually bought Alpina, or more specifically the branding rights (no shares were actually sold). I’ll be honest my heart sank, and despite trying to find positive angles about the ‘sale’ it’s not recovered since. My childhood…