WHAT is healthier than having one efficiency division? Having two. BMW, which has achieved a lot success with its famed M division, is shopping for the model rights of the Alpina tuning agency, which has been constructing high-performance automobiles primarily based on Bimmers for 57 years.
This new growth is paying homage to BMW rival Mercedes-Benz taking a controlling curiosity in tuning agency AMG in 1999 and buying the Affalterbach-based firm outright in 2005.
At present, F1’s dominant staff bears the identify of the renamed Mercedes-AMG division, which produces a number of fashions that headline the model’s passenger automotive and SUV line-up.
Whereas the particulars of the deal between BMW and Alpina – which is topic to varied suspensive situations – stay undisclosed with each events agreeing to not reveal any monetary particulars, the agency’s current co-operation settlement will run till the top of 2025.
Buchloe-based Alpina will in all probability preserve its give attention to combustion-engined BMW fashions till then, after which, BMW says, the cooperation will proceed “in a unique type”.
BMW stated the acquisition would deliver better variety to its line-up and safe the long-term way forward for Alpina, which has been lively in tuning and motorsports from the Sixties and started manufacturing passenger automobiles primarily based on BMW merchandise as way back as 1978.
The family-owned firm employs about 300 folks and produced about 2000 items in 2021.
Viability of low-volume producers is beneath menace due to the motor trade’s transformation to electromobility and growing authorized necessities, BMW says.
Subsequently, the acquisition of Alpina will permit the Munich-based automotive large to “form the long-term course of the specialist model because the trade goes by means of a far-reaching transformation towards sustainable mobility,” BMW gross sales chief Pieter Nota stated in an announcement.
Below the deal, BMW will handle the Alpina model and its merchandise, whereas the latter will proceed to function the upkeep and spare elements enterprise for BMW Alpina automobiles.
Alpinas are pre-assembled by BMW and ultimate meeting takes place in Buchloe, about 70km west of Munich.
The tuning agency’s modifications lengthen to engine, drivetrain, suspension, physique kits and aerodynamic tweaks, in addition to particular person exterior and inside executions to buyer specs, which is why the agency’s fashions demand such a premium over even BMW M automobiles.
BMW stated there could be an enlargement of growth providers out of Buchloe.
“We recognised the challenges dealing with the automotive trade early on and at the moment are setting the fitting course for Alpina and for our household agency, Bovensiepen,” stated Andreas Bovensiepen, co-managing director of Alpina Burkard Bovensiepen.
“We made a acutely aware resolution to not promote Alpina to simply any producer, as a result of BMW and Alpina have labored collectively and trusted each other for many years,” Bovensiepen stated.
Alpina stated the deal can have “implications” for workers on the Buchloe website. By the top of 2025, BMW intends to supply some Alpina staff new jobs at BMW or assist prepare new employment with associate or provider firms.
Although BMW fans, particularly followers of the model’s efficiency variants, will applaud this effort to safeguard the way forward for Alpina, it could in the end result in the erosion of the well-appreciated variations between BMW M Division efficiency fashions, which have lately turn into much more extra expressive (some would say “brash”) and Alpina merchandise, which, though purposeful, are typically extra restrained of their execution.
