The Bovensiepen family have confirmed that their first car since selling their Alpina marque to BMW will cost well over £300,000 – testament to their new company’s aspirations to rival Bentley and Aston Martin.
The Bovensiepen Zagato, revealed last year at Italy’s prestigious Villa d’Este Concorso d’Eleganza, is a heavily reworked BMW M4 that promises to stay true to the traditional Alpina formula in combining staggering performance with GT levels of refinement.
Named for the Italian design house that shaped it, the Zagato will be limited to just 99 units. Prices in Bovensiepen’s German home market start from €369,495 – equivalent to nearly £322,000, or roughly as much as the Ferrari Purosangue.
That makes the straight-six luxo-coupé significantly more expensive than similarly conceived but bigger engined mile-munchers like the Bentley Continental GT, Aston Martin Vanquish and Ferrari Amalfi.
It also makes the Bovensiepen brand’s debut model far more costly than anything it produced in its previous guise as Alpina – including even the ultra-rare, BMW Z8-based V8 Roadster.
The high price reflects both the exclusivity and the highly bespoke nature of the car, with its maker claiming that more than 250 hours goes into handcrafting its bespoke elements – predominantly made from carbonfibre – at its historic Buchloe headquarters near Munich.
With “thousands of test kilometres” under its belt, the Zagato is on track to be delivered to its first customer in autumn – and no two examples will be the same, with huge scope for personalisation offered through the newly launched configurator.
Bovensiepen said: “Every customer request is implemented down to the smallest detail in our workshop – from the optional Lavalina full leather interior, which is crafted with over 130 hours of dedicated handwork, to stylish exterior accents in clear-coated carbonfibre or brake callipers in your choice of colour with milled ‘Bovensiepen’ lettering.”
As Bovensiepen puts the final touches to its debut model, BMW is gearing up to unveil the first new Alpina models of the modern era, having taken full ownership of the brand at the beginning of this year.
BMW will pitch Alpina between its M performance division and Rolls-Royce, applying the badge to high-powered and ultra-luxurious derivatives of BMW models – including the 7 Series limo and X7 SUV, which will provide the basis for the brand’s first cars, to be revealed on 15 May.
As Alpina is reinvented under a new owner, its founding family is shifting its focus to become “a manufacturer of outstanding automobiles that embody the ambition of fine driving”.
The first project from its eponymous new outfit is extensively differentiated from the BMW on which it’s based by a totally bespoke treatment at the front and rear, a reshaped bonnet, a revised side profile and Zagato’s trademark double-bubble roof.
The Zagato features a BMW-sourced 3.0-litre straight-six engine that produces 603bhp and 516lb ft for a 0-62mph time of just 3.3sec and a top speed in excess of 186mph, Bovensiepen claims.
It has bespoke Bilstein dampers that can be configured in three driving modes (Comfort, Sport and Sport Plus), which is said to offer “a range from pronounced comfort to athletic driving dynamics”.
