BMW has shown the Vision BMW Alpina concept at the Concorso d’Eleganza Villa d’Este, putting a 5.20-meter grand tourer on stage as Alpina marks its 60th anniversary and heads toward a new role inside BMW Group from the beginning of 2026. The car is presented as a preview of how the brand may be repositioned under BMW control, with the upper-class segment in its sights.
The concept is longer than the last BMW 8 Series by more than 30 centimeters, and that matters because the 8 Series was discontinued last year without a direct successor. BMW is filling that space with a car meant to sit between the core BMW range and Rolls-Royce, a slot the company says Alpina should bridge going forward.
The shape makes the point without much explanation. The Vision BMW Alpina borrows from the Alpina B7 Turbo Coupé based on the BMW E24, the old coupe that gave Alpina one of its best-known signatures in the early 1980s. That car was offered with a turbocharged inline-six and produced 300 horsepower in one version, or 330 horsepower in the S version. The new concept echoes that era with a slightly forward-leaning Shark Nose, a long hood and Alpina’s trademark decorative lines, which have marked the brand’s creations since 1974.
The wheels are as much a statement as the bodywork. The front axle wears 22-inch wheels and the rear 23-inch wheels, both using Alpina’s familiar 20-spoke design. Four ellipsoid exhaust tips finish the rear, keeping the car visually tied to Alpina’s performance identity even as the brand prepares for a more formal place inside BMW’s structure. For readers following the wider BMW Alpina shift, more background is available in BMW zeigt Vision auf der Bühne am Comer See.
Inside, BMW has taken a different path. The cabin uses the Panoramic iDrive layout taken largely from BMW’s Neue Klasse electric models, with a large central screen, a display strip at the lower edge of the windshield and a steering wheel with two spokes at the top and bottom. Those elements are already known from the iX3 and the new electric BMW 3 Series, but the concept adds an extra touchscreen for the passenger seat, pushing the car closer to a luxury long-distance cruiser than a pure showpiece.
Adrian van Hooydonk said Alpina has always stood for a distinct philosophy of performance and refinement, one in which dynamism and comfort are complementary rather than opposing demands, and said BMW’s task as the new owner is to preserve that character while updating it for the present. That is the real test of the concept: whether BMW can turn a name associated with finely tuned Munich-made cars into a broader upper-class label without sanding off the qualities that made Alpina matter in the first place. The answer, at least for now, is that BMW intends to try.
