The guys from ALPINA have been working with BMW for over 50 years now. This year, they celebrated this impressive milestone with a variety of events and with a few special models as well. However, what better way to celebrate passion than to show it on screen? The guys reached out to Rainer Witt and asked him to showcase his unbelievable collection in front of the camera, allowing the world to see what passion incarnate looks like.
The man has been a fan of the ALPINA brand for quite some time. As he reminisces it all started when he and a friend went down to the local dealer to buy a new car, initially driving to a Mercedes-Benz showroom. Seeing as the dealer wasn’t all that nice to them, they decided to go to a BMW dealership nearby, from where they had bought other cars in the past. Chance made it so that that particular showroom had an ALPINA in the back that simply stole Rainer’s heart the moment he saw it.
And what a car he picked to be his first ALPINA: a B12 5.7. In case you’re not up to par with ALPINA’s naming schemes, that’s a car based on the BMW 8 Series coming with a 5.7-liter V12 engine good for 416 HP and 570 Nm (420 lb-ft) of torque. It’s not only one of the fastest cars the Bovensiepen engineers ever made – with a top speed of 300 km/h or 186 mph – but also one of the rarest, only 57 ever being assembled.
Of course, for our collector, this was just the beginning. Having driven this particular car to one of his friend’s houses in Switzerland, our good man just happened to meet yet another ALPINA fan who allowed him to drive his E12 B7S Turbo – a car based on the E12 BMW 5 Series using a turbocharged 3.5-liter straight six engine good for 330 HP and 500 Nm (369 lb-ft) of torque. That allowed the car to reach 100 km/h (62 mph) in 5.9 seconds. Remember, all of this was possible on a car built back in the early 1980s.
Needless to say, Rainer fell in love and, over the years, he became one of the biggest collectors of BMW ALPINA models in the world. His garage is absolutely stunning as you’re about to see, filled with both old and new Buchloe-built models.
