Together with its long-term Japanese importer Nicole Automobiles, ALPINA is celebrating another historic milestone this autumn, namely the production of the 5000th BMW ALPINA for Japan.
To mark this special occasion, Yoshiaki Matsuoka from Tokyo traveled to Germany especially to take delivery of the 5000th vehicle, a BMW ALPINA B7 Bi-Turbo.
In honor of this historic occasion the delivery was personally attended to by Burkard Bovensiepen who founded ALPINA in 1965, together with his two sons and acting CEOs Andreas and Florian Bovensiepen as well as Nico Roehreke president of Nicole Automobiles and Jonathan Ganser of ALPINA.
Nicole Automobiles first began importing BMW ALPINA automobiles in 1979. Only a handful of vehicles were delivered to Japan in the early years of the partnership but this added up to a total of 100 vehicles by 1985. The awareness of the ALPINA brand grew steadily thanks to excellent marketing and Japanese customers’ demand for exclusive and sporty automobiles engineered and built in Germany, with a high attention to detail. By the year 2009 a total of 3,000 vehicles had been delivered to Japan, reaching 4000th in 2014.
ALPINA is aiming to produce a total of 1,600 vehicles in 2016 and Japan represents the second most important export market in terms of annual volumes after the USA. This is also reflected in the presence of ALPINA at every Tokyo Motor Show since 1989, where the latest models are presented to customers on an exclusive show stand. Additional there have even been some special BMW ALPINA models created for and made available solely in Japan.
Today Nicole Automobiles is a prolific automotive sales company operating three ALPINA dealerships in addition to several BMW, MINI, Rolls Royce and Ferrari dealerships in the greater Tokyo and Yokohama area.
