Alpina B5 Touring 2020 review

I'm Tom Baker, this is Chasing Cars, and this long black wagon behind me will be instantly recognisable if you're a massive BMW nerd. If not, it's the Alpina B5 Touring. Now, for a very long time, Alpinas have not been available in Australia as a direct import. You've been able to get them through some unusual mechanisms, but for the last couple of years, one dealership in Australia has been responsible for importing the Alpina range, or at least a small part of it. You can get a few of these very, very special BMWs here in Australia, tuned by Alpina, which started in the late 1960s as an independent tuning company for BMWs. Later on, obviously, BMW M has become the centre of performance at BMW, but Alpina do something quite different because they make fast BMWs, often in station wagon form, which is great, that are also extremely comfortable, considerably more comfortable than their M car equivalents, as we'll see in this B5. Because under the bonnet, there's something very serious, a 447 kilowatt twin turbo V8. Until the new Audi RS6 arrives later this year, this is currently the fastest production station wagon in the world, and it has all-wheel drive, so on a day like today, it can actually put the 800 newton metres of torque down properly, plus it's just a big, beautiful wagon, and who doesn't like that? Indeed, the good stuff continues inside the B5 Touring, because in the Alpina, you get a really beautiful bespoke cabin. What the B5 Touring is, is essentially a 540i luxury line Touring, built in the same factory as the regular 5 Series in Germany, but then it heads off to Alpina for some bespoke items, including the really cool front lip spoiler that we saw just a minute ago, but also some special stuff inside. Now, what you get is effectively the highest-end 5 Series interior, but not the M5 interior. Instead, it goes for ultra-luxe, rather than ultra-sports in the cabin. So, you can see these stunning comfort seats, the highest-end 5 Series seat on offer, finished here in black with grey piping, but there are innumerable combinations that you can order as a custom fit for the B5, including an actually even higher grade of leather that's exclusive to Alpina. This particular car has piano black as the secondary materials, but you can get beautiful natural wood if you pay them a little bit more, but otherwise, it's largely standard 5 Series fare, and that's a good thing, because the interior is functional, well-designed, and integrates technology in a good way. However, you do notice a few easter eggs. Alpina badge on the steering wheel, gorgeous green stitching, which is, and blue, which has been a hallmark of the Alpina brand, and then each car gets an individually numbered plaque between the front seats, letting you know which number your particular car is. This one is Touring 404, so you can see that there's only hundreds of these vehicles instead of tens of thousands in the regular 5 Series line-up, hundreds of thousands by the time it finishes its run, so it's a highly exclusive vehicle. In terms of the tech, we have a large 10-inch touchscreen up here, it runs BMW's second most recent form of iDrive, so you can touch it, you can swipe, or you can use the rotary dial between the seats, plus you get wireless CarPlay included, which is great. It's a decent Harman Kardon stereo, you can go all out on a Bowers & Wilkins version if you prefer, however. Seat comfort is awesome, they are incredibly adjustable, even stuff like the upper backrest, the wings on the crested headrests as well, it's, you know, a sumptuous experience. And in terms of practicality, it's good. We have a decent centre console here, big cup holders, wireless smartphone charging, and door bins that'll take a big bottle. But, what's life like in the second row? Let's find out. Because what's the point of buying a five-metre-long station wagon if you don't get a generous back seat? Thankfully, in the Alpina, that isn't a concern, because the dimensions are very generous back here, and comfort levels are high. So, for me, it's six foot, I've got another inch or two of headroom, despite the fact we have this enormous panoramic sunroof offering a good view out, my legroom's acceptable sitting behind myself, tow room is okay. You could get five either at a pinch, but it's really better for four as a bit of an Autobahn express for you and three colleagues, or perhaps as an incredibly sumptuous family car. And you do get a few amenities back here, so air vents, two separate climate zones, heated rear seats, a little shelf here, I guess, for a phone. We do have a flip-down armrest with deployable cup holders, that's all very standard. Five-series fare? What isn't is the embroidered rear headrests, too, and we get these sun blinds here for the rear windows, including a tiny, tiny sun blind for this one here, just so no sunlight is able to penetrate and bother you while you're relaxing back here on a long drive. But, while you're on a long drive, will stuff be able to fit behind you? Let's check out the boot, because behind the Alpina B5, it's all pretty standard five-series fare, and that's a good thing. Behind this electric tailgate, you get 570 litres of space, and it's a well-thought-out boot. There's absolutely no load lip, plus you have a bit of protection, so you're not going to scratch the paint, especially if you go for that really awesome Alpina green. Now, in terms of other features, we have a cargo cover that deploys up and out of the way, a bit of underfloor storage, which is always good. You can flip down those back seats from here in the boot as well, but it does have my personal favourite nerdy feature, which is glass that opens independently of the boot, so you can just toss your stuff straight in. But naturally, this vehicle is largely about what it's like to drive on the road, so let's jump in. When it comes to being behind the wheel of the Alpina B5 Touring, on paper it can look like a bit of a contradiction, but in the real world it works out so beautifully, and I'm going to explain exactly what I mean by that. But first of all, that contradiction. See, the B5 Touring is currently the fastest production wagon you can buy in Australia, with a 0-100km sprint of just 3.7 seconds, but at the same time, Alpina talks up the comfort levels of this estate car, and I think squaring those two is very, very difficult to do, because generally, the faster you make your car in the real world, the more compromised the comfort has got to be in order to give it the stability it needs at very high speeds, and the B5 can do very high speeds, over 320km per hour. Probably not here in Australia, more like on the autobahns of its homeland, but even so, it's a cool stat to have and rattle off in the pub. But, while it is very, very fast, Alpina's absolute expertise in damping also enable the B5 to be both stable and really, really compliant, and even plush in the suspension department, and it's an incredible achievement. I mean, you pay for it, this car is over $200,000 plus on-road costs, but you do get an incredibly resolved package. But first, let's talk about that engine. So, it's BMW's 4.4-litre twin-turbo petrol V8. It's an engine we've seen a little bit before, but the implementation of it in the B5 Touring is quite special. Now, you can get the V8 in a standard 5 Series, in the M550i, or in the M5, but in those vehicles, it's really tuned to be an out-and-out sporting engine. Here in the B5, it's quite muffled, actually. It's so muffled that you just sort of lope along as if you're in an ultra-luxury eight-cylinder vehicle where the engine isn't meant to be kind of overtly heard, and while you're in comfort mode, I think that's a really appropriate sort of thing, but all you have to do is step it over to Sport, and you're immediately reminded of what's under the bonnet in terms of sound, and also in terms of sheer, outrageous propulsion. That V8 engine is hooked up to an eight-speed ZF torque converter gearbox, very familiar from the 5 Series, but you can leave it in Auto, but you drive it manually through Alpina's own sort of buttons on the back of the steering wheel, rather than paddles. They do take a bit of getting used to, but it's a strange sort of unique alternative that I haven't really seen too much elsewhere, and some people might prefer it. The B5 Touring is one of the only wagons I've ever driven that gives you that genuine punch into the back of the seat feeling when you open it right up. Well, it's torquey. In fact, it has 800 newton meters of torque and 447 kilowatts of power, so absolutely manic output. It's so big that it's an absolute shock how much of a pussycat the B5 is to drive when you're not looking to drive sportily, and you can knock it back into its comfort setting, everything relaxes right off, the throttle response becomes a bit more doughy, and anybody can drive it. It's the Jekyll and Hyde personality that I think makes it quite genius, because, I mean, when you're driving an Audi RS6, for example, which is probably this car's main rival, you know that you're in a hardcore Audi. It's very firm, it's very loud, and, you know, it's still a cool car in a real cue car outside, but I think the P5 actually does the recipe just a touch better. Now, about that ride. So, we have adaptive dampers here, which Alpina tune themselves, and the comfort mode is significantly better than the BMW comfort mode. In the BMW, it's quite boaty, body control's a bit of an issue, but in the Alpina, that's not a problem. It's nice and flat all of the time, but also bump absorption is improved. It's only the sharp edge sort of bumps that you find with badly surfaced urban roads that you'll feel. Everything else just gets soaked up by the excellent suspension on this car. It has air suspension at the back to help with sort of classic wagon jitters from the rear end. They get mainly dialed out. The compliance is excellent. Then you step the dampers up to Sport, Sport Plus if you like, and the whole thing hunkers down better, but it's clearly designed for European roads, which are much smoother than Australian ones. Now, this is still a really big and heavy car, so you're never going to be able to punt it down the road with the same alacrity as a hot hatch, but it certainly turns on the charm. The steering is acceptable, just like the 5 Series. I think the steering is a bit aloof, but the chassis is very nicely done. So, the bias in the all-wheel drive system is lovely. It clearly sends a significant amount of torque to the rear wheels, in fact, up to 90%, which is better than you get in a standard 5 Series Touring with all-wheel drive. Not a configuration that we can get in Australia, however, because all that has to be done is a breath of a throttle out of a corner, especially if the road is damp like it is today, and there's plenty of entertainment from the rear end in a predictable and graceful little slide. But, that's assisted by the fact that there's next to no understeer from the front end, and that's because Alpina multiply the amount of negative camber on the front wheels by four, from a very gentle 15 minutes of camber on a standard 540i wagon to a whole degree of camber, and you could take it further if you wanted to, but it's a pretty good blend between cornering tenacity and comfort as it is now. I mean, these guys are pretty much the specialists in that. So, as a package to punt down a B road, it's actually lovely. However, I am looking forward to driving the new Alpina B3 Touring, based on the excellent new 3 Series wagon, which we reviewed recently on this channel. Just because the smaller size is going to suit the kind of tight back roads I like a bit better, but the B5 certainly does well at it. It's also exceedingly refined, unbelievably quiet in the cabin, even over coarse chip surfaces. This is a bonafide luxury car. It's a bonafide grand tourer. One of the best resolved and best balanced packages I've reviewed in the last couple of years. I really, really like it. Seats are also supremely comfortable. There's good visibility. The sound system is great. It's very, very nicely done in here. Plus, you get all the safety systems from a normal high-end 5 Series, adaptive cruise control, very solid lane keep assist with lane centering and tracing, blind spot monitoring, rear cross-traffic alert, and a 360-degree camera as well. So, those are our detailed impressions of the amazing Alpina B5 Touring. When what you want is an incredibly exclusive, incredibly fast, incredibly comfortable station wagon, and congratulations on being the two people out there with taste, this vehicle gets the job done incredibly well. Yes, it's expensive. Yes, it's slightly ridiculous, but nobody else is going to have one on the road, or very, very few enlightened people will. It dispatches Australian roads with ease because of its specific Alpina-tuned damping. It has an absolute stonking engine. Plus, it has more than enough room for passengers and cargo. I think that makes for a pretty compelling mixture, don't you? Let me know what you think below this video about the Alpina B5. While you're down there, make sure to hit subscribe, and as always, thanks for watching Chasing Cars.