For The Reformed Speed Lover: The BMW Alpina B6 Gran Coupe

There is a moment in every speed-loving driver’s life when he realizes that, no, he will never take his new sports car to a race track. He is not the next Gilles Villeneuve. He will never be a driver with superhuman skill like Ryan Gosling in Drive or Jason Statham’s Transporter. He likes fast cars, he’ll admit, but he doesn’t need to go setting record lap times. Call it growing up, or call it coming to a full understanding of one’s self. Either way, the point is, the speed-loving driver no longer has anything to prove.

And with that realization, everything comes tumbling down. You see sports cars in a new light. Compromises you made before seem absurd now: That sport suspension package that was harder than a stone mattress; the performance exhaust that sounded like a dying elephant at 120 km/h on the highway; the racing seats that left bruises. How did the dealer talk you into this stuff?

When this moment comes — and it will — you’ll be thankful we let you in on this secret: Alpina.

Most likely you will not have heard of this German automaker. It is one of the smallest in the world, producing only 1,500 cars per year. Even in their fatherland, an Alpina is a very rare sight on the Autobahn. Here in Canada, where Alpina offers only two models, you may never see one at all.

The Alpina is the car you would take for your daily commute or on a 1,000 kilomtre road trip.

A little bit of explanation is in order, because as you may have noticed, the newest model, the Alpina B6 Gran Coupe pictured here wears BMW badges. That’s because it used to be a BMW — a 650i Gran Coupe to be exact — before BMW took it off their production line and sent it to Alpina so it could be hand-finished with a bespoke engine and interior trim.

Alpina has been doing this since the 1960s, and has been certified as an automobile manufacturer — not merely a tuner — since 1983. Every Alpina gets its own VIN number. (The company’s other business is as a distributor of rare and vintage wines.)

The Alpina B6 is the yin to the BMW M6’s yang. Where the M6 is all about motorsport-derived handling and performance, the B6 is about luxury and power. On paper, these are perhaps subtle differences, but in the real world they are night and day.

The Alpina is the car you would take for your daily commute or on a 1,000 kilomtre road trip.

In fact, we put this to the test, driving from Halifax to the farthest corner of Canada, a tiny dot of land called Fogo Island, northeast of Newfoundland. The B6 took us 1,200 km through the worst conditions Canadian winter could throw at a car. It’s all-wheel drive system got us safely over ice-covered roads and out of deep snow. It was more than worth the journey to get to the spectacular Fogo Island Inn.

Alpina fits their own suspension, tuning it for comfort, not record-breaking lap times. Even sitting as it does on Alpina’s signature 20-inch, 21-spoke wheels, the ride was noticeably more forgiving than on the M6.

Where the roads got twisty, the Alpina doesn’t wallow as you’d expect such a luxurious car to do. It rolls slightly into corners, but once there takes a neutral stance, allowing the driver to play with its perfect balance. Alpina works magic on the chassis.

But, you’re thinking, you still love speed. The BMW-based, Alpina tuned twin-turbo V8 engine delivers 540 horsepower. Combine that with the all-wheel drive system not available on the M6, and the Alpina actually beats the M in the dash from 0-100 km/h, doing it in just 3.9 seconds. It’s absurdly quick for a family car. The best way to understand the Alpina B6 is as a better-handling Bentley in BMW clothing.

Maybe for you this all sounds wrong. Maybe you’re looking at that soft suspension and silky-smooth leather interior and thinking there’s no way it could be any fun at all to drive. And that’s fine. But there will come a time when the Alpina makes perfect sense. It’s not meant for the race track, but for the real world. It blends the speed and power of a sport car with the comfort of a luxury sedan in a way that no other automaker can do so sublimely. So when you’ve got nothing left to prove, give Alpina a call.

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BMW B6 Gran Coupe

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