We Asked BMW ALPINA’s Design Chief Everything. Here’s What He Said

The Vision BMW ALPINA had just been uncovered the night before on the grounds of Villa d’Este — a 5.23-meter, V8-powered grand tourer that doubles as the first real signal of what BMW intends to do with the ALPINA name it acquired in 2022. The next morning, over a roundtable at the Concorso d’Eleganza, we got 30 minutes with Maximilian Missoni, BMW’s Head of Design for Upper Mid-Size, Luxury Class, and ALPINA. He’d arrived at BMW almost exactly when the ALPINA project began. The history book was already on his desk.

Two Brands, One Object

The first question was the obvious one: where does the design actually come from? Not the high-level B7 and speedboat references BMW has been repeating in press materials, but the real process. Missoni’s answer was more candid than expected.

“I always sometimes wonder, how do we distill things like brand, things like history into an object,” he said. “In this case especially, because it’s the blend of two brands, and they have individually very strong history.” A vision car for a single brand is already a complex exercise. A vision car that has to launch an entirely new brand identity at the same time — with coherent messaging, aesthetics, and values across every touchpoint — is a different kind of problem. “If you just do that, you might take a very small step, and very small steps are nice for a year or two, and then they fade.”

The leap they took is 5.23 meters long and deliberately positioned at the very top of the luxury tier before the brand works its way down.

Learning ALPINA From the Inside Out

Someone asked what Missoni’s familiarity with ALPINA actually was when he got the project — whether he came in as a fan, or had to start from scratch. He was honest about it. The Vision BMW ALPINA was essentially the first project he touched when he joined BMW, and his introduction to the brand was the same one most of us had: Adrian van Hooydonk apparently left an ALPINA history book on his desk.

“It was really, really important and really beautiful journey that we did as a team to dive into all those stories,” Missoni said. The team drove old ALPINAs, scrutinized their interiors, and looked for the details that ALPINA customers notice even if they couldn’t articulate why. “The little emblems in the carpets — something you might even overlook if you’re not an ALPINA connoisseur, but if you are an ALPINA customer, you better make sure that emblem is in that carpet.”

Someone at the table mentioned the stitching on the back of old ALPINA steering wheels — how smooth it was compared to the equivalent BMW piece. Missoni nodded. Those are exactly the things the team went looking for.

His favorite classic ALPINA, if you’re curious: the E24-based B7 coupe that inspired the Vision car. “That is especially one for all of us.”

ALPINA vs. M: Why There Was Never a Real Conflict

Someone raised what seemed like a real tension: how do you run ALPINA and M in the same house without one bleeding into the other? The customers are different people. The jacket analogy came up — M makes a statement, ALPINA is quiet luxury.

Missoni said the concern was more intense inside BMW early on than it is now. “In the beginning there were questions: how does BMW ALPINA differ from M? How do you make sure they won’t infringe into each other’s territories?” His read: there was never any real risk. Both brands are rooted in performance, which is why they belong under the same roof. But their expressions are entirely different. “With M, everything is geared towards track performance, towards a bit more responsive, bit more nervous driving. With ALPINA, it’s all about comfort and luxury and confidence, albeit you still have the power.”

The lineup maps cleanly: MINI, BMW, M within BMW, Rolls-Royce. High-performance thinking runs through all of them. The characters don’t.

Was There Ever a Debate About Making ALPINA a Standalone Brand?

One question cut closer to the business logic: was there ever serious internal discussion about separating ALPINA entirely from BMW — not BMW ALPINA, just ALPINA, the way Rolls-Royce operates as its own thing? Missoni didn’t think so, and his reasoning was simple. “Even in the old days, ALPINAs always had a BMW on the hood.” The combination isn’t a surprise to anyone who knows the brand. He compared it to M — you know there’s a big number behind it, and part of the charm is exactly that. “Part of the charm is the unsaid component, and that comes with the combination of two brands.”

The Design Freedom ALPINA Never Had as an Independent

One of the more useful questions asked whether the Vision car’s body — genuinely distinctive, not just a BMW with a different badge — was a realistic preview of where production cars would go, or a concept-car fantasy.

Missoni wouldn’t give a black-and-white answer, and that was probably the honest one. But he made the underlying point clearly: ALPINA’s design freedom is greater now than it ever was when the Bovensiepens were running it. “Before, you needed to always have a very comprehensive base — the potential freedom of the brand is much greater now than it used to be.” The old model required a donor vehicle that was essentially fully engineered before ALPINA could touch it. Now, with access to BMW Group’s full platform architecture, the brief can start further back. What the Vision car shows, he said, is the potential of the brand — not necessarily what every production ALPINA will look like, but proof of what’s now possible.

Some engineers from Buchloe followed the brand to Munich. The original ALPINA facility continues, focused on caring for classic ALPINA vehicles — that part of the story stays in Bavaria, separate from where BMW ALPINA goes next.

The Deco Line and Where It Actually Came From

The side graphic has been on every ALPINA since the 1970s, and on the Vision car it’s applied under the clear lacquer — visible but unfelt, tone-on-tone as standard, available in gold if the customer wants. Someone asked how Missoni thought about balancing heritage elements against genuinely moving the design forward.

His answer was more specific than the usual “respect the past while projecting the future” response that question normally produces. “It’s so easy to fall back to retro statements, and to me that wouldn’t have been enough.” Rather than accept the thin, fragile version of the Deco line that ALPINA had arrived at over decades of iteration, the team went back to the original. It came from a Fischer ski. Burkard Bovensiepen loved the graphic enough to put it on his race cars in the 1970s — bold, solid, a clear statement. Over the years it got diluted. “We said, let’s go back to the 70s, take the initial idea, reinterpret it for the luxury segment, and apply it under the clear lacquer.” You can see it. You cannot feel it. “Maybe Bovensiepen would be happy that it’s finally back to where he wanted it from the start.”

What 300 km/h Actually Means for Exterior Design

“Speed, not sport” is ALPINA’s stated philosophy, and the 300 km/h figure has been attached to it. At the roundtable, the question was whether that’s a real engineering constraint or marketing language.

It’s real. “The 300 is a realistic number. I know it’s mostly relevant for Germany, but it’s still nice to know that you could, if you wanted to, and if you were allowed to.” What it means for Missoni’s job: aerodynamics becomes the dominant design constraint in a way that most luxury brands never have to confront. “Some other brands don’t even need to worry about those kinds of things — wind noise, for example. To a certain speed, you don’t need to worry about certain shapes, because you’ll be fine. But if you go towards 300, suddenly physics changes. Aerodynamics — it’s exponential. The forces are exponential. Things that are happening are quite different, and we have to design around those constraints.”

The Biggest Design Challenge Isn’t Crash Safety — It’s Sensors

There’s a version of this conversation where pedestrian safety regulations are the villain — sharp noses versus soft front ends, the classic tension between styling and compliance. Missoni said the team expected that to be the hardest problem.

It wasn’t. The shark nose, incidentally, is fine. There’s a 30-degree angle rule that means a sufficiently inclined surface deflects a pedestrian around the vehicle rather than into the dangerous hard components. “But as it turns out, the biggest challenge is all the driver assist sensor systems — all the cameras and radars and laser scanners. Integrating all these components is, from an exterior point of view, the biggest challenge of our days.” Dozens of sensors and cameras, each needing to be housed somewhere visible enough to function and invisible enough not to ruin the design, on every model, getting harder with every generation. Someone at the table mentioned ultra-premium brands already running asymmetrical sensor clusters in their grilles. “It takes some consideration to integrate everything. And it’s getting more and more.”

On autonomous driving specifically — whether ALPINA would philosophically lean away from Level 3 capability in favor of a more driver-focused approach — Missoni wasn’t ready to reveal yet. His answer was essentially that the question misses the point: one of the things that makes BMW ALPINA attractive from the start is full access to BMW’s entire technology portfolio. He wouldn’t draw a line there.

Engineering Character: What Happens to the Old ALPINA Spec Books?

The old independent ALPINA had a literal book — engine components, suspension upgrades, exhaust systems. Physical modifications, documented and delivered. Someone asked whether that tradition continues under BMW, or whether software has replaced it entirely.

Missoni’s answer was that both are true and not mutually exclusive. Physical changes will still happen, to a degree that depends on the model. But on the electric side, the work is in software — building an ALPINA character into the powertrain’s behavior, its responses, the way it delivers. “The engineers are working on a very unique ALPINA behavior, ALPINA character, and that’s what you can expect.” Whether it arrives through hardware or code depends on what the vehicle needs.

Individualization: Where BMW ALPINA Sits Between BMW and Rolls-Royce

At $250,000 to $300,000, the first BMW ALPINA production model puts itself in territory where customers expect more than a configurator. The question of what ALPINA’s version of bespoke looks like came up directly.

Missoni laid out a two-tier approach: a curated path, where ALPINA pre-approves combinations so the customer can’t accidentally make something tasteless, and a fully open path for those who want to deviate from the palette entirely. What it won’t offer is the Rolls-Royce private office experience — a designer in the room, co-creating a coach-built car from scratch. “That’s where Rolls-Royce starts.” Within the dealership network, selected locations will have dedicated ALPINA spaces. Standalone ALPINA locations are in discussion with regional markets but not confirmed. The idea of customers watching their car being built — something that costs relatively little to offer and tends to create loyalty that’s hard to replicate — was raised at the table and received a straightforward “this could be an idea for sure.”

Will U.S. Customers Ever Get an ALPINA Coupe?

Historically, the American market has only received ALPINA sedans. The B7 coupe that inspired the Vision car never made it over. Someone asked whether that changes under BMW.

Missoni wouldn’t commit to future products — the standard answer — but he did say the brand is starting top-down, with the Vision car’s 5.23-meter length as the opening statement. “It’s nearly as long as the 7 Series. It’s really deliberately positioned at the top end of the lineup, which then points towards the type of cars we will start trickling down.” He added that a coupe is imaginable, without saying anything more specific than that. It wasn’t a no.

Electrification and the Irony of How BMW ALPINA Got Here

BMW ALPINA will offer electric powertrains. The Bovensiepen family sold the brand in 2022 partly because they couldn’t make that work themselves — the software engineering required to make an electric ALPINA feel like something more than a rebadged BMW would have cost more than a low-volume independent manufacturer could justify. BMW can justify it.

Missoni put the philosophy plainly: “I would say the same rule applies as we have for BMW as a brand, so technology openness — even ALPINA will offer both powertrain options.” Combustion and full electric, from the BMW portfolio, given the ALPINA treatment. “The customers will have a choice out of the portfolio of powertrains of the respective BMW vehicles, and then they will get the ALPINA treatment and be maxed out in terms of power and performance and comfort and luxury — that’s the beauty of being within the group.”

The first production BMW ALPINA arrives in 2027, based on the G70 7 Series — internally coded as the G72. It launches as a pure V8, with electric variants to follow. Whether it carries the B7 name or something new — suffixes like 80 and 100 have been discussed in relation to other planned models — hasn’t been confirmed. The direction is top-down, starting at the large luxury end of the market before working toward anything smaller. An ALPINA X7 or X5 to compete with the Mercedes-Maybach GLS is the obvious next question. Missoni’s answer was the same one he gave on coupes: “We’re going top-down.”

Whether an electric ALPINA can actually feel like an ALPINA is the question no one at the roundtable could answer yet. The engineers are working on it.