Sustainable fuels, £40k support cars...

... and the best pre-BMW takeover Alpinas on the classifieds

By Cam Tait / Tuesday, 3 March 2026 / Loading comments

You’re going to be hearing a lot more about sustainable fuel over the next few weeks. Firstly, because this year’s Formula 1 season is about to get underway and features a grid powered by 100 per cent sustainable fuels, and secondly, The Gassing Station co-host Sam Sheehan has just topped up his Mazda MX-5 with a full tank of eco-friendly petrol made from farming and organic waste. It comes from Sustain, an offshoot of British fuel company Coryton, which aims to drastically slash the environmental impact of production by utilising waste products already in existence. It’s not strictly zero-emissions, but it should be considerably cleaner than the old-fashioned way, and with some tangible benefits for those driving, too.

In other, slightly outdated news, we finally get around to discussing BMW’s acquisition of Alpina. As you may have seen, the German car giant shared a new version of the Alpina badge last month, along with more details about what’s in store for the brand’s reboot under its ownership. We dig into some of the details, including the teased wheel design, before picking our favourite, pre-acquisition models currently available on the classifieds. Sam found this epically cool Alpina V8 Roadster, Buchloe’s take on the BMW Z8, while I found this incredibly rare B6 3.5 S, which is still the only time the firm ever got its hands on a BMW M car.

With all that time spent drooling over Alpinas, we found the time to take up a buying challenge. PHer Loafers92 is on the hunt for a car that’ll serve as a support vehicle on supercar rallies across Europe, one that won’t upstage the GMA T.50s and Porsche 918 Spyders in convoy but can also keep pace on twisty mountain roads. With the budget capped at £40k, Sam found this lovely Aston Martin V8 Vantage for £39,995, which pairs the bigger (and better) 4.7-litre with a six-speed manual gearbox. My pick’s a little more left-field, but I think this Subaru Impreza WRX STI S206 ticks a heck of a lot of boxes for £34,995, not least because it’s got proper seats in the back for the supercar owner who breaks down. Of course, if you think those are rubbish, you can pop your own suggestions in the topic here.

To round things off, we dive into aturnick54’s topic ‘why do people fill up at motorway service stations?’. They suggest that anyone who pays a premium for fuel are either poor at planning or lazy, so Sam crunches the numbers to see just how expensive filling up on the motorway versus a local, cheaper petrol station. Some genuine consumer advice on the pod this week, which has surely got to be worth a listen while you peruse old Alpinas...

Listen here