Say Hello To The 198-MPH Cure For The Common M6 Gran Coupe
Alpina has been lovingly modifying BMWs for half a century, but as we learned during a tour of the company's HQ in Buchloe, Germany, Alpina has been in the wine distribution business for nearly as long. The company has an estimated million bottles on reserve in two warehouses and a beautiful wine cellar/tasting room on property in western Bavaria, just yards from where its 1,500 hand-crafted automobiles per year are produced.
What does that have to do with the new B6 Gran Coupe? Well, it may help make sense of the overall character of Alpina's automobiles, especially vis-à-vis the similarly priced, similarly powerful M Cars that BMW sells in far greater numbers. Alpinas are built by wine connoisseurs for wine connoisseurs, or wine connoisseur types; they are not rip-snortin' racecars for the road – that's M's domain. Alpinas are esoteric, rich in character and nuanced. But make no mistake: they are very, very fast.
Our brief first drive of the B6 Gran Coupe – the only 6 Series-based Alpina we'll get in the US for 2015 – took place on German autobahns and Austrian alpine roads, where the car is more at home than anywhere in the world, both literally and figuratively. With 540 horsepower and 540 pound-feet of torque on tap from its twin-turbocharged 4.4-liter V8 and xDrive all-wheel drive, the B6 is said to be able to hit 60 miles per hour in 3.7 seconds on its way to a top speed of 198 mph, a massive 43 mph faster than the M6, which is electronically limited to 155 mph. Yet even at insane speeds – we saw an indicated 190 mph on one particularly lonely stretch of Autobahn – the B6 feels more luxurious than sporty, taking the countenance of a low-slung Bentley Continental GT or an Aston Martin Rapide S, not a knife-edged supercar. It doesn't feel scintillating like a Porsche 911 GT2; rather it feels rock steady, like the 4,780-pound luxury sedan it is.
The B6 has a handcrafted feel that makes the M6 feel robotic by comparison. Alpina hand-sews the leather-wrapped steering wheel with its trademark green and blue stitching and installs its own button-style manual shifters on the posts. America-bound versions uses top-shelf leathers from BMW for the seats and dash/door trim, but the blue-faced gauges and rich Myrtle wood with a gold inlaid crest are Alpina-isms that make for a particularly sumptuous, Maserati-like cabin. On the outside, the front and rear fascias, quad exhaust tips, rear lip spoiler, and of course, those gorgeous 20-inch, 21-spoke turbine style wheels make a style statement that is sportier than stock, but still for grown-ups.
It all comes together in a thoroughly integrated way, not like some aftermarket tuner shop that pieces its mods together in a less harmonious fashion. Like a fine wine, the Alpina favors complex and satisfying flavors rather than overt boldness.
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