Alpina’s reshape of the latest Seven Series has caused huge excitement. Could it hit production?

BACK in 1965, Burkard Bovensiepen set up a small shop in his native Bavaria offering high-performance tuning of cars.

It evolved to be a BMW specialist, creating derivatives of BMW models that focused on blending comfort and performance, with a little more of the former than BMW M cars ever had.

Alpina has been closely integrated with BMW for decades since and, on January 1 BMW took full ownership of the brand.

The outfit since announced its intention to create a range of unique cars that sits between BMW and Rolls-Royce.

Here’s the first. This stunning piece of automotive art is the Vision BMW Alpina, a four-seat coupe with a lavishly trimmed cabin.

Revealed in Italy at the 2026 Concorso d'Eleganza Villa d’Este, it is "inspired by the BMW 7 Series.”

Alpina is set to have a new car out next year; is this a preview of that product?

That might be a stretch. BMW is instead suggesting that it might be setting out the design manifesto for the brand. But it’s certainly bewitching.

Alpina's characteristic 20-spoke alloy wheel design has been gently modernised, and the Vision BMW Alpina features 22-inch rims at the front and 23-inch wheels on the back, hinting at this car's performance.

Though the overall shape and detailing is certainly reminiscent of BMW's own design language, it's also something new, especially at the rear, where there are two horizontal lines of LED lighting, a prominent ‘Alpina’ wordmark and four oval exhaust outlets.

The show car ostensibly has a V8 engine, though BMW Alpina hasn't divulged any details other than to say it is "tuned to produce the characteristic notes of the Alpina exhaust: rich and deep at low speed, sonorous at high revs.”

The interior has BMW Alpina branding everywhere and some unique crystal switchgear, but the concept clearly uses BMW's latest technology stack, including the impressive 'Panoramic Vision' display concept, with a driver-oriented touchscreen, plus the passenger-side screen as fitted to the new BMW 7 Series.