Alpina B4 S 2019 long-term review

Why we’re running it: To see whether £65,000 is too much for a 4 Series without an ‘M’ on its rump

Month 2 – Month 1 – Specs

The truth is to be found some 6800 miles from road-test headquarters at 30, Teban Gardens Crescent, Singapore. It’s here you’ll find Alpina’s sole concessionaire in the world’s third wealthiest per capita economy. It’s also where this B4 S was originally destined, where indeed it briefly ventured, and where it probably would have stayed were it not for the fact that, due to a punitive tax regime, over there an Alpina like this costs about the same as a 911 Turbo. No contest? Not really, and people said so with their wallets.

And so to cut a saga short, there are plenty of countries that, like Singapore, drive on the left, but very few that have an established appetite for brand-new and expensive Alpina cars. It meant that after failing to find a buyer, our example was shipped back to Germany and converted to the UK spec in preparation for a stint at the magazine you’re holding. After we drove it home from the Alpina factory in Buchloe on temporary German export plates – a splendidly comfortable and sometimes breathtakingly fast journey touched on in our initial report (6 February) – that should have been that.

Alas, as it was originally Singapore-bound, this particular Alpina never received what’s known as a Certificate of Conformity for European markets, which details everything from engine power to axle weights. Several attempts to register the car with the DVLA were therefore thwarted, hence the delay. But eventually, after various documents were unearthed and decoded from German, an Individual Vehicle Assessment was booked and the DVLA duly satisfied. “You’d think we had built our own kit-car, and built it badly” was how one manager at Sytner, the UK importer for all Alpina cars, put it during a phone call.

Now we have it back, already our B4 S has had a run-in with the new 911, if only in passing. Given the asking price for what is essentially a modified 4 Series, albeit modified extensively, I think it’s reasonable to compare the two cars and it’s a duel we’ll return to in more detail over the coming months. But so far it is one-nil to Alpina. Okay, so rolling refinement isn’t the be-all and end-all for a performance car, but the older, fractionally less powerful (but far more torquey) car was demonstrably more relaxing on the 140-mile, motorway-heavy route up to MIRA, where the 911 recently underwent the track element of its road test.

The Porsche’s problem is its beefed-up rear spring rates. They support the mass of the engine sublimely in the Welsh mountains but channel considerable tyre roar into the cabin at a cruise and have the chassis labouring on less than ideal surfaces.

The Alpina isn’t perfect in either respect, but despite the vast, 20in forged wheels and 30-section tyres, it glides along by comparison, treading lightly and riding fluidly. Its 3.0-litre straight six matches the displacement and turbo count of its compatriot, but it’s also less booming than those famous horizontally opposed half-dozen cylinders, with the tall seventh gear overdrive dropping the tacho to around 1700rpm at a quick cruise.

Among cars of comparable size and performance, it’s without peer in its long-legged manners, at least in this tester’s humble opinion. You’d never know what performance lurked within, and it would be even better if you could select the Sport weighting for the notably delicate steering but keep the two-way adaptive dampers in Comfort.

I suppose that is the most attractive element of Alpina’s proposition. No matter where this B4 S may end up during it’s time with us or what rivals it might come up against, you just know it’s always going to be the one everybody will want to drive home.

Love it:

Unfussy looks The ‘F32’ 4 Series provides a superb basis for Alpina’s additions – the muscular lines are deceptively simple but purposeful.

Loathe it:

White leather It’s already picking up marks and slightly undermines the B4’s vibe as a serious driver’s car. Makes for a wonderfully airy cabin, though.

Mileage: 2100

Back to the top

Back to the top

This car is special, but special enough to merit the outlay? Let’s find out – 6th February 2018

Tiny Alpina doesn’t have the inventory resources of a major car maker, so it’s rare a box-fresh example can be conjured for a long-term magazine test. Rare, and sweeter still if you happen to be the road tester dispatched to the Bavarian town of Buchloe for a factory collection.

This magazine makes no secret of its fondness for Alpina’s under-the-radar approach. The cars go like rockets but are a pin-hammer to M division’s nail guns: less thrilling but more obliging when all you want is to hang a picture. And frankly, I defy anybody not to warm to a company whose engineer-founder Burkard Bovensiepen not only chooses to live slap-bang between final assembly and the engine workshop but also harvests the hot test-bench exhaust gases to heat his swimming pool.

There’s also an unusual side hustle, to help make ends meet: wine. Half a million bottles of it are stored on site. In the early days of tuning BMW engines for racing, Bovensiepen would arrive at far-flung meets in a van stacked with spare parts. And being parts for touring cars, most of them never made it back. The vacated space became the basis of a wine distribution network. Fast cars and wine don’t really go, but Alpina has a habit of deftly defying convention.

It’s why, were it our money, at least one-third (and most probably two-thirds) of the road test desk, which will be running this B4 S, would opt for Alpina’s alternative to the BMW M5. There isn’t a journey I wouldn’t cheerfully undertake, in any weather and at any speed, from behind the wheel of the B5 Biturbo because the chassis is so gloriously supple, given how rigorously it marshals 600bhp. Speed, comfort and control – the concentrations are just right for day-to-day driving.

Our new long-term test car is similar in conception but has a tougher task. It’s smaller than the B5 Biturbo so won’t naturally ride with the same composure, even though it needs to get close to that level to justify its price. As a bona fide performance coupé, it simultaneously needs to be responsive; not M-car alert but not far off.

Autocar first drove the F32-based B4 Biturbo in 2014, when Andrew Frankel pronounced it “damn near as fast as an M4, easier to drive, quieter and more comfortable”.

BMW subsequently pacified the M4’s twitchy suspension, creating a far more exploitable road car, before Alpina gave the B4 a minor increase in power to create the B4 S. As it stands, the result is two extremely similar cars on paper. It’s no wonder Alpina UK spends plenty of time telling confused potential customers that this car is not a BMW trim level offered as some sort of expensive satellite to the M division’s wares.

So what better journey to enlightenment than the one from Bavaria to London? The evolution of BMW’s N55 3.0-litre twin-turbo straight six, tuned to deliver 434bhp and a mammoth 486lb ft – and deliver it beautifully – is a story for another report. Suffice it to say this is a very special motor and one that, nourished by Aral’s near-mythical 102-octane brew, fired our B4 S to an indicated 194mph on a section of autobahn near the Belgian border. Less fire, more waft, in fact.

Alpina’s chassis revisions have always seemed impossibly painstaking when you consider just 250 or so employees turn out only around 1500 cars each year. The bushings are bespoke, and so are the anti-roll bars, dampers and springs, and the geometry. The ‘ALP’-marked tyres are also a custom compound from Michelin and are definitely not of the dreaded run-flat variety. Again, any ride assessment deserves more space than it can get today, but 1049 miles in two days suggest Alpina’s diligence has mostly paid off.

As this is an introductory report, we should talk about specification, of which there is much. Alongside the detail work to the engine and adaptive suspension, as standard Alpina fits a rich-sounding Akrapovic sports exhaust more Joe Bonamassa than Kirk Hammett, and the S, unlike the original B4, also benefits from a mechanical limited-slip differential.

There is engine stop/start, automatic LED headlights, DAB radio, cruise control, parking sensors, rain-sensing windscreen wipers, heated electric sports seats and folding wing mirrors. Those using the car daily will want for nothing, it seems.

Optionally, our car wears Alpina’s hallmark blue metallic paint (£1590) with an Opal White leather interior (£1215) whose purity will probably prove harder to preserve than a wedding train dragged through a farmyard. Additional noteworthy outlay is detailed in the test data box at the bottom of the page.

The total cost for this particular 4 Series, with options, is £78,880. When Porsche gets round to pricing the basic 992-generation 911 Carrera later this year, it’s likely to settle on a similar figure, and perhaps this single but significant fact undermines the case for the B4 S altogether. I’m not so sure.

The Alpina is faster and a more special, unusual sight on the road. It comes with added practicality and is built from an outfit overflowing with charm, history and a sense of intimacy. Could it possibly be worth the money? It just might. In three months’ time, we’ll know for sure.

Second Opinion

As a farewell to the F32-generation 4 Series, running an Alpina B4 S will take some beating. I’ve always preferred Alpina’s understated take on an M4, and we may even get a chance to compare our new B4 S with BMW’s latest G20-gen 3 Series.

Matt Saunders

Back to the top

Back to the top