Words by Jeff Heywood
The Bovensiepen Zagato Coupe was launched at the Concorso Villa d’Este, May 2025
Alpina, as we’ve come to know it over the decades, is no more. The Bovensiepen family, which has owned the company since its inception, sold the rights to the name and badge to BMW, and the changeover to BMW ownership took place very low key, in May. BMW is taking the brand upmarket and has stated that future Alpina’s will be based on larger BMW models; the company has no plans on making any smaller Alpinas. So whatever BMW bear’s the Alpina name starting in 2026, it’s not going to be a “traditional” Alpina manufactured at the former Alpina HQ at Buchloe.
But Alpina as we know it, isn’t dead. It’s evolving and also moving upmarket, but it’s also staying true to its roots. Since it can no longer use the Alpina name, the company is now called Bovensiepen Automobile, and its first product is the Zagato Coupe. Some of Zagato’s designs can be a bit ‘Marmite’, and the Bovensiepen Zagato is a mix of hit and miss in my eyes. The coupe is based on the BMW G83 M4 Convertible, but it has a fixed hardtop roof. Bovensiepen chose the drop-top as the base because it didn’t want a B-pillar, which detracts from the experience of driving an upmarket coupe. So they removed the factory roof and its electric folding mechanism and installed their own double-bubble carbon fibre roof in its place. Unfortunately you can’t get away with the fact that it looks exactly like what it is, a hardtop for a convertible car. There is a reason for this ‘look’ – read on to find out more…
The entire Bovensiepen Coupe’s body is made from carbon fibre. However, a complete M4 Convertible is still hidden under there, with all its factory body panels. Bovensiepen did this because it needed to preserve the M4’s safety credentials and essentially not have to homologate the Zagato as a completely new car. Yet even with both layers of bodywork, the car impressively remains lighter than the M4 on which it’s based, mainly because the heavy folding roof has been removed. Weighing in at 1,875kgs compared to the donor M4’s 1,925kgs, the Zagato Coupe is 50kg lighter. It’s also longer and wider than the M4. It grows from 1,887mm in width to 75.3 inches 1,913mm without mirrors, and length increases from 4,801mm to 4,943mm, although it doesn’t look like a bigger car when you see it in the metal. It’s also marginally lower than the M4, but only by a few millimetres.
Bovensiepen hasn’t tried to hide the hardtop design; they have deliberately left a visible seam where the top meets the body. That seam remains visible because body-flex would eventually cause the paint to crack if it was filled. Even so, making an entirely new body for a car is a departure for the company. The carbon fibre components are outsourced and everything is then assembled in the Buchloe facility, with each car taking over 250 man hours to complete (this doesn’t include the manufacturing of each individual piece). There are a lot of positives about the exterior design. The M4’s wide and aggressive stance is subtly enhanced and the beltline has a more pronounced, voluptuous rake than it does in the M4, especially in the rear flanks, which has a more pronounced line that rises and continues into the large rear spoiler. The wheels subtly nod to the classic Alpina design familiar to enthusiasts, and they look great on the car.
The M4 LCI’s headlight internals have been retained, but they have a different shape, which works very well with the design of the front end, which doesn’t even have a hint of a kidney grille. For the rear, the M4/4 Series laser lights are carried over unchanged, but they look different in the context of the redesigned rear end.
The car’s interior is sumptuous, using the same Lavalina leather that Alpina vehicles have. Bovensiepen calls the shade of blue used throughout as “Heaven,” and while that may sound a bit excessive, seeing and experiencing the interior, it starts to make sense. Just like in Alpina, leather covers most surfaces, and it’s a visual and tactile delight. The seats are carried over from the M4, but they are reskinned and redesigned for an even more premium look and feel. The design of the cover for the seat squab is completely different from the M4, hinting at the longitudinal panels that you might see in the classic BMW E9 CS or a classic 50’s Alfa Romeo.
The Bovenspiepen Zagato Coupe has a sumptuous interior trimmed in the finest Lavalina leather
Under the carbon fibre bonnet, which has an embossed “Bovensiepen” script on the underside, lies a tweaked version of the M4’s S58 twin-turbo 3-litre straight-six. With Bovensiepen’s engineers and suppliers providing bespoke parts, like a new intake, turbos and tuning, it pushes out 611hp and 700Nm of torque, allowing this carbon coupe to spint to 60mph from rest in 3.1 seconds and on to over 186mph…
The engine brace is lifted straight from the M4 CS to provide extra torsional rigidity and improved steering feel, but it was painted black for a more subtle integration. The engine cover, just like the rest of the car, is all in carbon fibre and it proudly displays the Bovensiepen logo, which is new, but it still hints at the car’s BMW roots.
Bovensiepen hasn’t released any official production figures for the Zagato two-door, but it will be somewhere between 50 – 150 annually – if of course, the orders arrive. Since each car is hand-assembled, the annual production capacity will be very low. A price for the vehicle hasn’t been finalized, and it depends on how many cars they will actually build, but they expect the Bovensiepen Zagato to cost between €400,000 and €500,000, which is a lot of moolah, and it remains to be seen if a car costing over four times the cost of the donor vehicle can command such a high price…
Bovensiepen Zagato plaque mounted on the centre console
The Bovensiepen Zagato’s engine bay holds a tweaked BMW S58, good for 611hp and 700Nm of torque
A second plaque is mounted in the engine bay and contains the signatures of the two Bovensiepen brothers now running the company, Andreas and Florian
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