Alpina’s involvement with cars began with Burkard Bovensiepen’s purchase of a used Fiat 1500 – he wasn’t satisfied with the performance of the Fiat so he brought the car to a friend for a tune-up and make sure that is was running correctly. Burkard and his friend added a Weber carburetor, a more aggressive camshaft and opened up the muffler. This raised the horsepower from 67 bhp to 75 bhp. But shortly thereafter, a cloud of blue smoke began to follow the car and Burkard decided to stop driving Fiats.

In 1983 – after a lot of hard work – Alpina become a car manufacturer in its own right.

Burkard Bovensiepen