Back in 2022, BMW bought famed tuner Alpina, and that made aficionados nervous. For more than 60 years, Alpina has focused on building the best BMWs for the road, absolute mile-munchers that are just as comfortable on the autobahn as they are capable in the Black Forest. While we don’t quite know what BMW’s going to do with the Alpina brand beyond a stepping stone between BMW and Rolls-Royce, we do know what the firm’s key players are up to next. This is the Bovensiepen Zagato, and it takes the same philosophy behind Alpina and moves it way upmarket.
Think of Bovensiepen as The Artist Formerly Known As Alpina, named after the Bovensiepen family that founded the famed tuning firm. It may officially be a new company, but it’s still headquartered in Buchloe, still has Andreas Bovensiepen as owner and CEO, and for now, is still using BMWs as the basis for elevated creations. The main difference, other than the name on the cars, is that the new firm is moving way upmarket.
As you can probably tell by the name and headlights, we’re looking at a Zagato-rebodied M4 convertible-turned-hardtop that undoes some of BMW’s own visual sins. In addition to the signature fixed double-bubble roof, it gets a greenhouse so significantly changed that it features a proper Hofmeister kink. Best of all, because this thing’s based on the drop-top, it’s also freed from the shackles of B-pillars. Large fender vents with character lines running part-way down the doors add harmony to the creases over the haunches, a new rear end that relocates the licence plate to the bumper looks less tall, and although the front fascia has a whiff of GTA about it, you could credibly argue that it’s less offensive than the bucktoothed face of the M4. The result is the first Zagato in years that genuinely looks prettier than the car on which it’s based.
Under the hood, you’ll find BMW’s S58 twin-turbocharged three-liter inline-six, but Bovensiepen has turned up the wick to 602 horsepower and 516 lb.-ft. of torque. Mated to an eight-speed ZF automatic transmission and all-wheel-drive, Bovensiepen claims this will do zero-to-62 mph in 3.3 seconds on the way to a top speed of more than 186 mph. However, this isn’t a hard-edged sports coupe. It’s said to be tuned for a grand tourer feel, which means it should be fast but not rattle your fillings.
Oh, and then we get to the overall craftsmanship. The entire machine is assembled by hand, and the figures on assembly are astonishing. The whole thing takes more than 250 hours to put together, with the interior alone responsible for more than half of that. Nearly every interior panel along with the seats features soft Lavalina leather, a total of 390 leather cuts. The shift paddles are each milled from a single chunk of aluminum, the entire trunk can be lined with leather, and if none of the 16 standard hide colors fit your taste, another 45 are available.
Understandably, the Bovensiepen Zagato won’t exactly be inexpensive. Pricing hasn’t been officially stated, but considering the M4 cabriolet on which it’s based is already a six-figure car, don’t be surprised if this low-volume machine is serious exotic car money. Then again, modern machines with Zagato styling have never been mass-market things, and if BMW can sell 50 M4-based 3.0 CSL tribute cars for outrageous money, surely Bovensiepen won’t be hurting for buyers.
Top graphic image: Bovensiepen
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Bovensiepen sounds like “bovine schleppin’.” Will this one run until the cows come home?
I used to get Alpina and Alpine mixed up. But maybe an Alpina Alpine would be fun.
Just another piece of evidence that Zagato makes everything they touch worse. Truly impressive to have a design house with a 100% miss rate.
*explodes you with my mind*
Alpina?? The front end screams Altima!
oh no. can’t unsee that.
Isn’t the M4 a little small as a base for a grand tourer?
Not really. They’re big cars now…188 inches long, which gives them a bigger footprint than most compact crossovers and they tip the scales at nearly 4,000 pounds. There’s a case to be made that it’s already a GT…it’s bigger and heavier than a RAV4 hybrid.
Ze Germans stopped caring about size and weight years ago. They believe they can engineer their way around it. I’m skeptical, although I certainly wouldn’t kick an M4 out of my driveway.
“Nice Peugeot!”
*walks around back*
“….or is that a Mustang?”
It looks like an Infiniti and you can already get a lightly used current gen M4 in the 50s. If you’re willing to roll the dice on a questionable one you can even find them in the 40s at this stage, but I’d advise against that because M cars have become very popular choices for rich kids/influencer types to do nefarious things with then ditch.
Anyway, I’m far from the target demographic for something like this but do we REALLY need more upmarket bespoke shit? There’s literally never been a better time to be filthy rich car enthusiast…and I assume this will be $200,000+. I can’t imagine anyone who knows what this is paying that much for a gussied up M4 when you could just get a Bentley.
All in all it’s a resounding “eh” from me.
I’m not sure the driving experience nor the Bentley image are substitute goods. In any case, it’s not all that difficult to find people who spend many times their car’s actual value on spoilers and intakes. This isn’t much different – just for a more discriminating set.
“The First Of Fine Driving”?
Honestly, “The Fist of Fine Driving” would be preferable.
The one interesting idea was starting with the convertible to get rid of the B pillar, but I have to believe that is coming with weight and rigidity tradeoffs. Keeping the original headlights and taillights, probably for regulatory purposes, makes it look like a kit car (is it?) and as has been pointed out it has the front end language of a cheap Nissan.
These may still sell out, but only because of the massive stimulus that has been dropped on the rich through corrupt programs like PPP, not because it is good.
If an aftermarket company wanted to do something truly innovative it would make a modern BMW look like a BMW.
A few things:
It looks kind of uncomplete, you can see the body structure through the huge grille, which is clearly not intended. Looks obviously improvised.Front view overall resembles an old Audi.The set on hardtop roof has a cool style and I dig the true pillarless coupe form. But the roof isn’t really integrated, you have a cutline above the windshield on the a-pillar and I fear this goes over the whole width of the roof, even if this is not visible in the photos.The logo looks seriously cheap and stands in stark contrast to the intricate ALPINA-Logo.You would think all of the above should be unacceptable of a car that will cost, what? Above half a million Dollars? Plus: the name doesn’t really roll off the tongue in any language, including in German.
Not gonna lie, I thought the top shot was a Mazda 6 at first glance.
I’ve never looked at the M4 as a EuroMustang before (I reserved that distinction for the B8 A/S/RS5), but this version is definitely that. I don’t hate the aughts era Japanese styled front and it’s definitely better than the honeycomb buckteeth on the current M4.
Read the name as Blovensteen. Not bad, kind of has a Mustang vibe to it.
“Help!! I think I broke my bovensiepen…”
“Hmmm, humans don’t have bovensiepen!”
The styling is pretty inoffensive for Zagato, so I’m going to bag on that “First of Fine Driving” motto or whatever on the number plates instead. Did it start off as something else in German and just became word salad through Google Translate or did they just type “generic luxury car motto” into ChatGPT and this is what it shat out?
This thing is so ugly. I can’t point to a single re-bodied car by Zagato that improves on the original. They ruin everything they touch.
Some of their original designs from back in the day are excellent, but absolutely all the reskins are horrific.
It shouldn’t be hard to improve the M4 either – they ended up with an inconsistent mess of shapes that somehow ends up ugly yet anonymous.
There’s another Zagato car out today, a reskin of the 8C (idk why, it’s 20 years old). And once again, totally ruined the original.
“Maybe” the Aston martin Db4 they did in the James Bond era? And fully agree that all of the reskins of the 8c have not improved on the 8c, though I am biased in that opinion!
I was truly suprised to see it wasn’t a slightly modified mustang.
Well, the front end certainly looks much better than the normal M4’s, but it also looks rather a lot like a Nissan Sentra:
https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod/images/2024-nissan-sentra-129-6488757e6ae9a.jpg?crop=0.663xw:0.560xh;0.279xw,0.373xh&resize=2048:*
Bingo! I was looking at the front end going “That looks familiar…” but couldn’t place it until I saw your comment and realized you were spot on. Pretty unfortunate that it is still an improvement over what BMW puts on the M4.