New 611hp Bovensiepen Zagato costs from £321k
Alpina's former overseers know a thing or two about GT cars - they will need every ounce of that experience now
When we left the Bovensiepen Zagato, it was on a show stand back in May. Its name may not have tripped off the tongue, but the combination of Milanese design nous and Buchloe-based manufacturing expertise - not to mention the appealing thought of Alpina’s former owners turning the BMW M4 into a 611hp grand tourer - was well-received (even on PH, for the most part). It helped that we already knew much about the car, including its 3.3-second 0-62mph time and the fact that it would be limited to 99 vehicles. But we did not know the price.
Now we do: in Germany, the handcrafted Zagato will cost from 369,495 euros - or £321k. Which seems like a distressingly large amount, until you remember that the likes of a Bentley Continental GT or Aston Martin DB12 start at around £200k. Then it just seems flat-out insane. Is anyone really going to pay a six-figure premium to buy a renovated M4 with only a 3.0-litre straight-six to boast about and what is, very obviously, a BMW interior inside?
Short answer: yes, they will. You don’t spend 200 years becoming noted industrialists without learning a trick or two, and we’d imagine the Bovensiepen family has the personal details of more than 99 buyers prepared to part with an arm and a leg for whatever they turned their attention to once the ink dried on the Alpina sale. It helps that the Zagato looks the part, of course - and that virtually every car that emerged from the Buchloe factory gates in the last 30 years turned out to be worth every penny when it actually came to driving.
So rest assured, the ‘intensive development’ which got the Zagato to this point, and the 250 hours apparently required to assemble each example have not been in vain: Bovensiepen expects to begin delivering the first cars to customers in the autumn. Each example is said to benefit from over 400 precision parts, made almost entirely of carbon fibre. Certainly, that extends to the new body, which is made exclusively from composite.
Presumably, that is to the benefit of the Zagato’s lively performance, although much is made of the ‘countless hours on the test bench’ responsible for extracting more power and torque from the S58 unit than is claimed for the M4 CS. As well as 516lb ft of peak twist, buyers will get to enjoy ‘a distinctive, highly emotional engine sound’, which is an interesting claim for BMW’s famously strident six-pot. Probably, the introduction of a titanium Akrapovic exhaust system helps some.
The talk of a ‘superb handling chassis’ is easy to believe, if the evidence of umpteen high-spec Alpinas is anything to go by - not to mention the inclusion of Bilstein Damptronic dampers on the standard kit list. Elsewhere, the spec of each Zagato is the end result of customer input, with Bovensiepen suggesting that ‘each model is truly one of a kind’. If you don’t believe that, you’re welcome to have a play around with the new configurator. We definitely haven’t been wasting time today deciding that Malachite Green II metallic and forged Oro Tecnico alloys would be just the ticket…
Not a millionaire so what do I know, but feels it should be half the listed price.....at that point still a flat no from but I could see how others with deeper pockets could justify a case for it
Wheels are too big, and I'd like to see if 400 composite parts make it weigh significantly less tha a factory CS
Old neighbour had an Alpina D5 and it looked mint. It was so understated but if you knew, you knew (OK the Alpina stripes and alloys gave the game away but you know what I mean).
It was probably a bit more expensive than the base car it was based on but you could stomach that for the extra power without it being an M car.
This Zagato feels like what it is, and I'll judged cash grab.
More than a Bentley.... Lordy....
Some of these companies have gone absolutely insane.
Does the name mean anything to 99% of people who dont know Alpina?
This or basically any Porsche, Bentley, Aston, Ferrari etc......
Fwiw I wouldn’t be interested at a hundred grand, let alone three and a bit times that but I can’t imagine a life where I would have the option at either price so my opinion counts for exactly nothing in that respect.
If they charged half or a third of this price I still think it would sell in low numbers so maybe thay are positioning it in the right area.
Given the number of people who pay multi million pounds for a Bugatti, Pagani, or whatever hypercar, maybe a few will fancy such a car as this as their exclusive runaround. Relatively affordable (to them!) and with a well proven base car, it should be relatively painless to own and run compared to other classic or small production cars.
Not for me, but I can see it might appeal to some. Good luck to them.
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