![\"alpina](\"https:\/\/www.globalvillagespace.com\/tech\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/alpinas-new-chapter-bmws-vision-for-the-future-of-performance-luxury.jpg\" "\\"alpina")
<\/a><\/p>\nRenowned German outfit, now part of BMW Group and with its own designer, is poised for new era<\/p>\n
BMW will reveal the future of the Alpina<\/a>\u00a0next year, as it officially takes ownership of the 60-year-old performance brand<\/span> and installs a dedicated designer, previously of Polestar<\/a>, at the helm.\u00a0<\/p>\n Munich announced it had acquired Buchloe-based Alpina from its founders, the Bovensiepen family, in 2022, but the firm will continue to operate at arm\u2019s length through 2025, having recently launched the B8 GT<\/a> super-saloon as a swansong for its independent era.\u00a0<\/p>\n Details of exactly what the future holds for Alpina as it comes under the BMW<\/a> Group umbrella are unclear, but chief designer Adrian van Hooydonk told Autocar that the company will break its silence in 2026, when the handover is complete.<\/p>\n “Alpina has always been very special to us. We had a very good relationship \u2013\u00a0and we still do \u2013 with the Bovensiepen family who founded that brand,” he said.\u00a0“The Alpina cars are produced in our factory, so there was already a very strong technical tie-up as well.\u201d<\/p>\n “It has\u00a0been quiet because the agreement that we struck with the Bovensiepen family is such that from next year, we will talk more about it;\u00a0this year, it is all still under their direction.<\/p>\n “We love the brand and we want it to prosper in the future, but you will see some of that next year.”<\/p>\n Historically, Alpina models have been extensively modified versions of BMW models that offer similar power and performance capabilities to their racier M-badged equivalents\u00a0but put more of a focus on subtlety and touring refinement.<\/p>\n There is no word yet on whether Alpina will maintain that positioning (with dedicated B3\u00a0and B5\u00a0versions of the next 3 Series<\/a> and 5 Series<\/a>, for example),\u00a0but it’s likely that the brand\u2019s cars will henceforth be more obviously differentiated from the cars on which they are based.<\/p>\n Van Hooydonk recently presided over a wide-reaching overhaul of the BMW Group\u2019s design network<\/a>, with each of its brands swapping design bosses and new dedicated designers for BMW M and Alpina installed.\u00a0<\/p>\n “I was able to enlarge my team, which is very rare,\u201d he said, \u201cbut it’s also a token of the confidence that the top management has in our design team. Simply, the workload has grown, so it was actually helpful for me to be able to enlarge my first line.\u201d<\/p>\n Among the significant changes were Mini<\/a>\u2019s Oliver Heilmer moving across to BMW to replace Domagoj\u00a0Dukec, who is now leading Rolls-Royce<\/a> design, and former Polestar design boss Maximilian Missoni joining the German firm to take responsibility for Alpina.<\/p>\n \u201cI feel very good about those changes. It will allow the team to work with more dedication, more attention to detail,\u201d said Van Hooydonk. \u201cI split up the BMW team into two: Max Missoni is taking care of one half\u00a0and Oliver Heilmer, who was formerly in charge of Mini, is taking care of the other half.\u201d<\/p>\n Asked if that meant there could be more differentiation between Alpina cars, M cars and standard BMW cars, Van Hooydonk said \u201cthey are already quite different\u201d\u00a0but that the foundations have been laid for each brand to take on more of a distinct character.<\/p>\n “It will still remain one design language, but the teams are smaller in size and the workload is now divided over multiple shoulders, and that will simply lead, I believe, to better-quality results, and will set us up for more growth in the near future.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":62544,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"Default","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,137],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-62543","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-featured","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.globalvillagespace.com\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62543","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.globalvillagespace.com\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.globalvillagespace.com\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.globalvillagespace.com\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.globalvillagespace.com\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62543"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.globalvillagespace.com\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62543\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.globalvillagespace.com\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/62544"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.globalvillagespace.com\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.globalvillagespace.com\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.globalvillagespace.com\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}