If you’ve spent even a fraction of the time I have obsessing over weird, old, obscure BMWs, you’ve very likely heard of Alpina. It’s a German tuning firm that, for the past 60 years or so, has been modifying BMWs—first to go racing, and then to sell as more luxurious, capable versions of the base cars. For decades, Alpinas have been described as the thinking man’s M cars, nearly as capable but with their own distinct characters.
Alpina’s arrangement with BMW, which sees BMW supply vehicles to Alpina for modification and resale, has been going on for many years. But in 2022, BMW announced a change: It would be taking ownership of the independent tuner firm and bringing Alpina in-house. The full transfer of ownership happened at the beginning of this year, with the new entity simply being called BMW Alpina.
In the next step of BMW’s takeover, the company has reworked Alpina’s legendary emblem for the modern age. Thankfully, the makeover isn’t as severe as I feared.
I Prefer The Old One, But At Least They Kept The Cool Parts
I won’t lie to you, when I saw this embargo come in, my stomach dropped a little bit. Of the manufacturer emblems out there, Alpina’s is certainly among the coolest. Its general layout mirrors that of BMW’s iconic Roundel, with two circles and the tuner’s name printed along the top of the space between the two circles. But instead of blue and white pie-cuts inside, the inner circle features a coat of arms with two sections. On the left is a set of throttle bodies with velocity stacks with a red background, and on the right is a crankshaft with a blue background.
Alpina’s logo is easy to spot versus a normal BMW logo due to its distinctive, bright colors, while the engine parts are a throwback to the company’s early tuner days, where it modified engine parts to extract more power. That’s cool because 1) it’s a proper throwback to the firm’s beginnings, and 2) engine parts as part of a logo is just cool as hell.
To hear it would be changing scared me. Why change such a well-known, legendary, explicitly tuner-focused design? Much to my relief, BMW has only changed a few small things and left the most important parts alone.
Like many manufacturers and other big-name fashion and tech brands, BMW went the minimalist route with its logo redesign back in 2020, dropping the fill color from the outer portion of its Roundel and simplifying the rest of the design:
It looks like the company has done something similar here, dropping the color in favor of a simpler black and white appearance. The distance between the circles has also been made larger to accommodate bigger text for the brand name:
Firstly, I want to express how relieved I am about the Alpina logo keeping the velocity stacks and crankshaft, albeit in a simplified style. I’d be heartbroken if BMW simply started using the text “ALPINA” and nothing else, but that’s not the case here. But I am sad about how the logo has lost all of its color. Like I said earlier, that two-colored coat of arms is what made the emblem distinctive and easy to spot. In the case of this new emblem, the coat of arms has been eliminated, with the inner circle now just split into two opposite-colored halves.
Here’s how BMW explains the change in its announcement:
The new BMW ALPINA emblem honors the brand’s heritage while authentically evolving into the modern age. The new design features the same two significant elements as before – throttle body and crankshaft – central to the historic story of the brand. As with the already revealed wordmark, which encircles the badge, the elements within the badge benefit from clear and concise linework. A unique transparent execution emphasizes the emblem’s modern silhouette, and reduced colouring enhances the contemporary look and feel. The new badge design conveys a precise and refined execution, perfectly suited to the exclusive positioning of BMW ALPINA.
The thing is, I’m not really worried about this logo actually showing up on any new Alpinas. That new BMW logo I shared above hasn’t ended up on any production BMW exteriors since its launch six years ago; the company’s been using the same logo it’s had since the late 1990s, and only made some extremely subtle changes back in September.
Like that fancy new BMW logo, I bet this version of the Alpina logo will be used for marketing, branding, and everything that isn’t the cars themselves. When it comes to what’s actually on the bumper, I suspect the old Alpina logo (or at least a version more closely resembling it) will still be used. I asked a BMW representative to see if I was right, and here’s what they told me:
The release refers to a new „badge“ design, which indicates the design shown will be the template for what’s on the vehicle.
Top graphic image: BMW, Alpina
One can realize that is getting old when you become the person saying “this was better in my time”.
But I agree is not that bad, even more when you compare with current BMW designs…