BMW Alpina B3 2.7 1988

How many car makers these days strive for perfection? Perfection of concept, perfection of form and function? So many modern cars are compromises, cost cuts, and crossovers. Is it a sedan? A station wagon? A 4X4? A hatchback? What is it that these car makers are sending off the line? So many cars these days are so…..blended.

But not the Alpina; not the classic Alpinas. They are perfection of concept and form and function twice over. Once, because they are based on BWM sports sedans, and twice, because of  Alpina’s refinement of the concept of the sports sedan: The sedan that has all the class and quality of a European luxury car, and then, the performance, handling, and braking that makes the sedan the potent machine that, by its FR, big-engined nature, it should be. Alpina does it better than any other marque. (To me the only real competitor here is the Jaguar and Daimler Sovereign, Series 1 to 3 machines, but that’s perhaps my British prejudice.)

I’ll just say that, to buy a good, low kilometers, well cared for second hand Alpina, Japan has got to be your first port of call. Both from the Japanese used car auctions and from the specialist Japanese BMW and Alpina dealers, you can find and import for yourself a good BMW Alpina like this beautiful 1988 B3 2.7 liter machine that we scored recently for our customer overseas.

If you want a good used Alpina or BMW, buy it from Japan now (it’s early 2015 as I write this) because the used luxury European car market conditions in Japan are very good for overseas buyers these days. When the economy here picks up again, and it will, these cars will be grabbed by local buyers, collectors, and drivers who understand purity of concept; and you won’t be able to get them out of Japan as cheaply as you can at the moment.