BMW 1600 Alpina 1967

It happened in 1967 :

A out six months ago, we got a telephone call from one Glen Dye who identified himself as a CID reader from Wayzata, Minnesota. He told us that he had ordered a very special BMW sedan, and asked if we would like to test it when it arrived; Normally, we are not receptive to proposals of this kind, but our recent love affair with the BMW 1600 prompted us to listen with more than passing interest as Dye enthusiastically described the technical highlights of this particular BMW-and how it was that he had come to order it.

Dye, it seemed, had just returned home from an 18-month military service tour in Germany. There, responding like any normally motivated sports car buff, he spent most of his time, when not on duty, searching for a suitably exotic car to bring home. This quest eventually brought him to Alpina--best described as BMW's Shelby American-where, for a price, virtually any combination of standard and special BMW components can be mated to achieve almost any desired degree of performance.

Now imagine Dye, already partial to the concept of small, nimble sedans, chancing upon the source of the really quick BMWs. It is little wonder that he thought he had found Nirvana. Surrounded by the mystique of Alpina's Bavarian headquartersknowing that he was talking to the people who really know-Dye had ordered a BMW 1600 2-door sedan (BMW's smallest car) with a super-tuned 2-liter BMW engine (BMW's biggest engine) and all the attendant devices necessary to bring the chassis specifications in line with the engine.

Dye could barely contain himself as he told us about the blinding, dazzling per formance he expected his new car to achicve--he was . . . well, intoxicated at the thought of his European hot rod. Nonetheless, the hard fact was that his car then existed only as a list of part numbers on an order sheet. "Call us when your car is ready," we told Dye, and promptly forgot about the matter.

Closer inspection revealed much more. With Dye tripping over his own feet and his own tongue in his excitement to point out all the car's non-standard mods, it didn't take long for us to come to the conclusion that this had to be one of the slickest examples of a "sleeper" or a "Q-ship," that we had ever seen.

The engine is a BMW 2-liter unit, similar to the one used in the BMW 2000 TI model, announced in 1966. Alpina has raised the horsepower from an already impressive 135 hp to 160 hp by replacing the standard 40 mm Solex carburetors with 45 mra twin-choke Webers, fitting a high performance camshaft, raising the compression ratio from 9.3:1 to 10.5:1, and installing a set of very efficient looking tubular exhaust headers. Unfortunately, the transition to the 2000 TI's 12-volt electrical system wasn't made at the same time-the 12-volt alternator would have been a nice detail as a replacement for the 6-volt generator used on the standard BMW 1600. Apparently, the number of electrical components that would have to be juggled simultaneously was too formidable, and just not worth the effort.

While the engine is certainly the heart of any Q-ship, Alpina didn't stop with the little car/big engine concept. With teutonic thoroughness, they went through the entire car to ensure that every component was changed to be worthy of the improved performance promised by the engine. A 5-speed transmission with well-spaced gears replaced the standard 4-speed (compensating for the narrower power range of the super-tuned engine), and a 3.89:1 final drive with a limited-slip differential replaced the BMW 1600's 4.11:1 open differential.

All this needed additional stopping power and it was there in the form of the special ventilated front disc brakes to replace the BMW 1600's solid disc units, and bonded metallic linings used in the rear drums. The vacuum servo brake booster which we found so pleasant on the BMW 1600, was retained. During later testing, we recorded stopping distances from 80 mph averaging .86G deceleration, and never encountered a hint of fade. Brake balance was excellent, as was stability, and we expect that if these same brakes were on a low-sIung sports car instead of this high little sedan, even better stops could have been recorded.

Some of the confidence we felt during braking is certainly attributable to the Michelin XAS tires on the car. These asymmetrical radials are not yet readily available in this country, but they are the talk of Europe. Alpina equipped Dye's car with 5.5 x 13-in. wheels and -correspondingly large (165-13) tires, both substantially larger than the 6.00-13 tires and the 4 x 13-in. wheels found on standard BMW 1600s. These wheels also add one inch to the front and rear track.

The suspension, too, is special. Aside from heavy-duty springs front and rear, adjustable Koni shock absorbers are used on the rear suspension-adjustable for jounce and rebound separately and without removing them from their mounting points. The front shock absorbers (part of the MacPherson strut suspension) are also stiffer, but not adjustable. In anticipation of harder driving, the suspension components were reinforced. The rear semitrailing arms are stronger, as are the front spindles. Anti-sway bars have been installed at both the front and rear, and for improved steering response, the steering was quickened by changing the ratio from 17.6:1 to 12.8:1.

An Alpina tachometer was installed in place of the standard BMW 1600's clock. It's a good trade, considering time passes quickly in this little stormer, and a tachometer is a must to keep tabs on the engine, which feels like 'it will rev forever but has a strict red-line of 7200 rpm.

Visibility is so good in this car that the outside rearview mirrors Dye had ordered seemed almost unnecessary, particularly the one on the right. Dye also had Alpina install a driving light and a fog light, but apparently the wires were not hooked-up, because they were not working when we tested the car. An Alpina leather-covered steering wheel had replaced the standard BMW's plastic wheel. Anticipating increased fuel consumption (which, at 15-18 mpg, isn't all that bad) and hating frequent gas stops, Dye also had a 20gallon fuel tank installed-twice the size of the standard BMW 1600 tank.

As finishing touches, Alpina had installed some very comfortable Recaro bucket seats for the driver and front seat passenger. These seats are really buckets, deep and long and giving the lateral support usually found only with the seats used in NASCAR stockers. All these good things were, unfortunately,. at the expense of some ease of entry/exit and rear seat leg room, but we liked the seats so much we really didn't care.

Despite all the modifications to the engine, the -car can be driven-if you can control yourself-with the ease and tranquility of a Volkswagen. But put your foot down and both you and the car turn into Mr. Hyde. We just couldn't resist putting down the guys in their hopped-up, middleaged Chevys and the like-many of them could probably have beaten us if they were really on it, but they just didn't think they were going to have to work that hard. And when we managed to blow them off once, they were so embarrassed that they would usually shrink into the background rather than face further humiliation. But if the hot-rodders were, chagrined, the sports car types were overwhelmed. In one day on Long Island, we must have destroyed the egos of at least half a dozen unsuspecting owners of Triumphs, MGs, and Alfa Romeos. An 87 mph quarter-mile speed reached in 15.9 seconds, and a 0-60 mph time of 8.3 seconds , while certainly not Super Car performance, is unusual indeed for what looks like, and normally is, an economy sedan. Perhaps the most graphic example of the results of Alpina's modifications was made when we happened on a brand new BMW 1600 on First Avenue in New York City. With three of us in the Alpina, we dismantled the poor 1600 driver so thoroughly that it would have been worth plenty to have been around to hear him chewing on his dealer's ear. What he didn't know was that we had him by 2.1 seconds and 13 mph in the quarter mile (or 3.1 seconds to 60 mph); there just wasn't any way.

The Alpina BMW is equally superior to the BMW 1600 in the handling department ... and the standard BMW is pretty good. We have seldom driven a car which is as confidence-inspiring on twisting roads. The heavy-duty suspension, together with the available power and excellent brakes, make this car so responsive that even the most exacting of us could find little fault. As tall as the BMW 1600 body is, the Alpina cornered with very little body lean, indicating that the anti-sway bars were doing the job, and try as we might on our test track at New York National Speedway, we couldn't force any bad handling manners out into the open. The stcering-like that of a Porsche or a Mercedes-gets progressively heavier as the car is cranked harder and harder into a turn, providing an excellent means of gauging just how hard you are cornering. While this is true of all cars to an extent, German cars seem to have particularly good steering sensitivity.

The steering wheel, gear shift lever, and the pedals were all in exactly the right place for the driver deep in the comfort of the Recaro seat. We are sure that we could have driven the car for 12 hours straight and actually survived the experience in a cheerful and happy state. If we had a "general drive ability" category in our road test checklist, we would have to rate the Alpina BMW as excellent.

A few things annoyed us, but we are inclined to think that they were a result of some hasty work on the part of Alpina rather than inherent problems. The shift linkage was poor-sloppy and remote. We have come to expect a certain amount of linkage imprecision in rear-engined cars, but the BMW has a front engine and the linkage should cause no great design crisis. Adjustment to the linkage might well have resulted in an improvement.

Furthermore, the engine tended to load up when idling. We noticed that the lever for the "enrichment valve" (Weber's substitute for a choke) on one of the carburetors was missing, and since this lever also carries the spring which normally keeps the valve closed, the idle mixture could well have been too rich. Also, the float levels are invariably out of adjustment in new Webers, probably from their being banged around during shipping, and we suspected that they had never been accurately re-set by Alpina.

Our complaints, however, are really insignificant when weighed against all the exceptional qualities we found during our testing. We just plain loved this little car. But, before you write Alpina you'd better wait and see what Congress is going to do about the pending bill to waive safety and smog standards for small manufacturers; you may end up owning a car you couldn't import into this country. Unfortunately, Dye may have one of the last of this kind of car to legally enter the U.S.A.

Dye waited seven months for his car, largely because Alpina is in the enviable position of having many more orders than it can readily fill, a situation that we can easily understand. Nor is Alpina giving away these cars; Dye paid $5,048.45 for the car, plus $295.00 for shipping to New York (including insurance), and $236.00 duty, for a total of $5,579.45.

One of our staff, on hearing the cost of an Alpina BMW, exclaimed, "Holy Deutsch-marks, you could almost buy a Porsche 911 for that kind of bread."

"Yeah," Dye answered, "but how many guys can you fool in a 911?"

We couldn't have said it better.

Specs :