Proved on the circuit

Burkard Bovensiepen's business began in the early 1960s with twin-carburettor kits for BMW's new saloons. Racing was the quickest way to prove that the parts worked. From the late 1960s ALPINA prepared and ran BMW touring cars in hillclimbs, rallies and circuit races across Europe.

The results did the selling. Each win was an advertisement for engines and chassis parts that customers could fit to their own cars. That link between racing and road cars still shaped ALPINA's products long after the team stopped racing.

ALPINA counts 1970 as its greatest year on the track. With BMW not running its own touring car team, ALPINA was its leading representative in the European Touring Car Championship (ETCC) and the German DRM series.

The highlight was the Spa 24 Hours. Günther Huber and Helmut Kelleners won it outright in an ALPINA-run BMW 2800 CS, against the best touring cars in Europe. Earlier that season Alex Soler-Roig won at the Salzburgring, the first European Championship victory for BMW's big CS coupé. The same year brought championship success in hillclimbing and rallying too.

By 1973 the weapon was the lightweight BMW 3.0 CSL, the "Batmobile". BMW had returned with its own works team, and the ALPINA cars often raced against the factory cars and beat them.

ALPINA's line-up that year read like a list of future stars. Niki Lauda and Brian Muir won the opening round at Monza. James Hunt shared a car with Muir to finish second at Zandvoort. At the RAC Tourist Trophy at Silverstone, ALPINA CSLs driven by Harald Ertl and Derek Bell won both heats. BMW took the 1973 manufacturers' title, and ALPINA's results were a big part of it.

ALPINA kept racing through the 1970s and into the 1980s, but its future was in road cars. The hand-built B7 Turbo of 1978 used what the company had learned on the circuit, and in 1983 ALPINA was recognised as a car manufacturer in its own right.

ALPINA officially withdrew from racing in 1988, citing limited capacity and tightening rules. The engineers' attention moved to fast, refined road cars like the B10 Bi-Turbo.

The name returned to racing in the GT3 era. In 2011 Dino Lunardi and Alexandros Margaritis won the ADAC GT Masters drivers' championship in the ALPINA B6 GT3, entered by Liqui Moly Team Engstler.

To celebrate, ALPINA built the B3 GT3, a 99-car road car with 408 PS, an Akrapovič exhaust, a limited-slip differential and adjustable coilover suspension.