2017 BMW Alpina B7 xDrive

From the March 2017 issue

In the early 1960s, Burkard Bovensiepen found escape from his family’s ­German typewriter-manufacturing business by affixing hotter carbs in BMWs. Stealing the Alpina name from the typewriter outfit, he earned racing success and developed a sort of clairvoyance, anticipating high-performance BMWs before BMW did, starting with the more powerful Alpina 1500 and 1600 sedans, which predated the factory 1800 and iconic 2002.

Alpina left racing at the end of the 1977 season to begin its road-car operations with mightier 3-, 5-, and 6-series models (again, effectively presaging BMW’s own M3, M5, and M6) just as BMW’s big new 7-series made its debut. BMW never built an M7, perhaps because Alpina built its own 7-based creations. However, they were never really what an M7 might have been; too calm and stoic for the Motorsport badge. At least, not until now. After an onslaught of increasingly technical and tense M sedans, the 2017 B7, Alpina’s latest hot-rod 7-series, feels to us like what the biggest M car should be.