BMW unveiled the Vision BMW ALPINA concept lakeside at Lake Como, and for the first time we sat down with Max Missoni — BMW’s head of design for the middle class, luxury, and ALPINA lines — to walk through what this car actually is and what it means for the brand going forward.
The short answer: it is not a traditional concept. Missoni was clear about that. This car exists to establish the design language and hallmarks that will carry into ALPINA production cars now that the brand sits officially within the BMW Group family. What you see here is what ALPINA will look and feel like.
A Face That Separates Powertrain From Character
The front end is where most of the conversation starts, and for good reason. The kidneys are closed. BMW has spent several years gradually opening those grilles wider and wider, so seeing them sealed shut on an ALPINA concept is a deliberate statement. Missoni calls it a separation of powertrain identity from the face of the car — the kidneys float, backlit with a gap behind them revealing a mesh air intake. In practice it reads as weightless. Most people don’t notice the kidneys are closed on first glance, which was exactly the point.
The rest of the front end pulls from deep BMW history: the plan shape from the E24, the shark nose, the four-eye face. None of it is new language, but it is executed in a way that feels cleaner than anything BMW has put on a production car recently. The second-read details are where it gets interesting — chrome appears only in the extension of surfaces into the body, so it reads as depth rather than decoration. You have to look twice to find it.
That Color…
ALPINA has always been associated with blue and green. The green on the Vision car is neither. Missoni describes it as inspired by alpine mist — the clouds that hang in the trees in the Alps — which translates to a desaturated, contemporary tone that sits somewhere between sage and grey-green. It works better in person than in photos, which is either a strong argument for attending press events or a mild frustration for everyone else.
The Deco Line, Finally Earned
This is the detail that got the most discussion during our walkthrough, and it deserves it. The current ALPINA deco line is an adhesive sticker. It has always been an adhesive sticker. Missoni admits he had a complicated relationship with it — it never felt fully integrated into the design of the car, more like something applied after the fact.
To figure out what to do with it, the design team went back to its origin. Burkhard Bovensiepen, ALPINA’s founder, fell in love with a ski in 1974 — the Fisher C4, which won the 1976 Olympics with Franz Klammer. He liked the graphic on it so much that he had his team adapt it for ALPINA’s race cars of the era. That bold blue and green stripe, nearly signal-level in intensity, became the deco line.
What you see on the Vision car is that same gesture, slimmed down, integrated into the surface like a coach line on a luxury car, and done in the desaturated tones of the new color palette. It finally feels like it belongs.
The Wheels Stay
There was apparently no debate on this one. ALPINA’s multi-spoke wheel design is one of the brand’s most recognized signatures, and Missoni said the conversation was short — it had to be here. What the Vision car shows is a five-spoke interpretation, with four slimmer spokes condensed into five, running on 23-inch rears and 22-inch fronts. The spokes extend further toward the rim than past designs, which gives the wheel more visual presence at that size. It works.
The Rear End
The rear is the part of this car that rewards the most time. The plan shape — that wide, stretched tension across the shoulder — carries from the front all the way around, which Missoni says is a first for BMW. It makes the car feel longer and more taut than the proportions alone would suggest.
The taillights are an abstracted version of BMW’s L-shaped graphic: two parallel lines, slightly offset, which Missoni describes as a frozen motion blur. Clean at first read, and then if you spend time with it, there is a second layer of crystals underneath the graphic that only appears when you get close. It is the same philosophy applied throughout the exterior — the car reveals itself in stages.
The quad oval exhaust pipes stay. That is non-negotiable for ALPINA, and they integrate cleanly into the rear diffuser.
Inside, The Speed Line Continues
The six-degree speed line that defines the car’s side profile continues into the interior as a dividing element — dark environment above it, lighter and more luxurious below. It is a clean idea that also does real organizational work, separating the driver-focused upper zone from the comfort-focused lower one.
The Vision car is a 2+2, and Missoni says the rear seats are unusually generous for a car with this roofline. “No bad seat in an ALPINA” is apparently a brand principle now.
The deco line appears on the seats. The bridge stitches — hand-applied finishing stitches that ALPINA has historically used at the end of stitch lines in the steering wheel — appear throughout the interior in the brand’s signature blue and green, toned down from the near-signal colors of the 80s and 90s into something that fits a luxury cabin. Connoisseurs will find them. Everyone else will just notice the interior feels considered.
The detail that will get the most attention in person: the glasses in the rear compartment deploy upward from the console, can be set down on the wood surface where they attach magnetically, and illuminate on contact. It is the kind of feature that makes no functional sense for most and complete emotional sense for everyone else.
More Than Just A Tuner Now
ALPINA is no longer an independent tuner with a coachbuilding heritage. It is a brand within the BMW Group, and this concept is BMW’s way of explaining what that transition actually looks like in design terms. The hallmarks are still there — the wheels, the ovals, the deco line, the color — but they have been rethought for a luxury positioning that needs to stand on its own next to the 7 Series and away from M.
Missoni’s line — “speed, not sport” — is the one that sticks. ALPINA has always offered performance with comfort rather than performance at the expense of it. This car makes that argument visually in a way the brand’s previous designs, which were essentially modified BMWs with stickers, never quite could.
A production 7 Series ALPINA has already been confirmed for next year. How much of what you see here makes it to the road is the real question.
First published by https://bit.ly/3sM6JoH
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