Alpina 5 Series
As Alpina builds its last BMW 5 Series remix, we sample three of Buchloe’s legendary turbocharged autobahn annihilators
All good things come to an end, they say. For decades, family-run Alpina has applied its own stardust on BMW base materials to craft cars that blend BMW M-style dynamism with luxury and refinement levels akin to a Bentley, all in the name of high-speed comfort and efficiency.
Sadly, from 2026 it will be all over. BMW’s base machines will be going electric-only, which in the eyes of the Bovensiepen family is an evolution too far for their ethos. In March 2023 BMW acquired the brand, and from the end of 2025 will develop Alpina-badged cars in-house – positioning them as luxury offerings to sit below Rolls-Royces – while the Buchloe originators will move on as Alpina Classic, supporting its heritage.
Alpina recently produced its last 5 Series-based creation, the limited-to-250, all-sold-out B5 GT. To celebrate, it brought along a selection of historic turbocharged autobahn stormers in 5 Series form to the Zandvoort circuit – and as legacies go, these three are mighty. But which one gives the greatest adrenalin boost – E12 B7S Turbo, E28 B7 Turbo, or E34 B10 Bi-Turbo?
Before the B7S Turbo, Alpina already had form when it came to turbocharging the E12. The original B7 Turbo was the fastest four-door car in the world when it was unveiled in 1978.
Though the car was based on the 528i, it used the 3.0-litre M30B30 engine reserved for North America and South Africa – and then Alpina proceeded to change pretty much everything about it. As would become commonplace, the crushing surfaces of the pistons were reprofiled by Mahle to be flat with the standard combustion chambers turned out and smoothed to suit, and a 264-degree BMW camshaft fitted. Oh, and one more detail – a whopping great KKK K27 turbocharger with an adjustable boost function was added.
Then in November 1981, with the forthcoming E28 version of the 5 Series around the corner, Alpina unleashed a limited run of 60 B7 S Turbo models like the one you see here, now with bored-out 3.5-litre engines and a maximum boost pressure of 0.9 bar to give 330bhp and 365lb ft of torque. To put that in perspective, that’s about the same as aBMW 1M, a car 19 years younger.
Though Alpina enthusiasts like to think of their performance saloons as being the understated alternative to BMW’s M offerings, there are ample clues that this is something special. There’s a deeper chin spoiler, a gold decal set and the words B7 S Turbo plastered in a slightly incongruous-looking Seventies-style font on the rear flanks. It also rides on 16in multi-spoke alloy wheels that might seem tiny through the prism of today’s engorged SUV ‘rims’, but must have seemed huge
