BOVENSIEPEN ZAGATO

Former Alpina owner launches its new business with an exclusive, £320k 2+2 coupé based on the BMW M4 and shaped by an Italian design house

- RICHARD LANE

In Buchloe old habits die hard, if indeed they die at all.

The Bovensiepen family has now relinquished the rights to the 60-year-old Alpina name, trading them to the BMW Group, and the first model of their latest venture – Bovensiepen Automobile – represents a new dawn in a great many ways. And yet here we are, pounding round the Salzburgring in a modified BMW of a distinctly road-going disposition, with capitalised letters parading luridly across its chin.

There are twice as many letters now but it’s all uncannily familiar. When the Bovensiepens ran Alpina, a trip to the Salzburgring was their preferred method of letting the press loose in a fresh model. There would be a couple of cars, chatty senior management and old workshop hands mulling in the pits, plus a mountain of ALP-marked tyres and Brembo brakes in one of the garages. It never felt less than an incongruous arrangement, given the laid-back nature of the luxury cruisers that made Alpina famous, and sure enough the same is true for the stunning new Bovensiepen Zagato. This £320,000 2+2 is pitched both as an extra-special collector’s curio and as a credible alternative to something like an Aston Martin DB12, but one thing it is certainly not is a track-day blade. It’s an opulent, leather-stuffed GT with monstrous torque.

That said, one key difference between the Zagato and Alpinas of yore – even the most special ones – is that rather than being based on a mainline BMW, underneath the full carbon body lurks an M4. An M4 Competition xDrive Convertible. We will come to the implications of the Zagato using a full-blown M base in a moment but, first, why choose the heavier convertible?