Alpina will premiere its new 2020 B3 Touring at next
month’s Frankfurt Auto Show and has just dropped its first teaser image. The darkened photo offers us a
glimpse of the B3 Touring’s front-end that, like other Alpina models, it will
be rather striking thanks to a sharp new front splitter. It also appears as
though there is a chrome grille surround and chrome vertical slats.
What’s more exciting than how the car looks is what will be going on under its skin. In all likelihood, the B3 Touring
will be based on the M340i Touring which is currently the fastest and most
powerful 3-Series estate on sale. The car features a 3.0-liter turbocharged
six-cylinder that delivers 369 HP, but Alpina will bump up grunt to well over
the 400 HP mark, possibly going as high as 450. The finished product should be
the next best thing to a the M3 Touring that BMW does not intend to make.
The previous B3 was sold with rear-wheel drive as
standard but could be equipped with all-wheel drive at an additional cost – and
we expect no different for the new one. In AWD guise, expect a 0-100
km/h time of under 4 seconds and, typically for a non-Porsche German car, an
electronically limited top speed of 250 km/h.
A number of other Alpina models are expected to be
showcased in Frankfurt, such as the XD3 and XD4, B5 Bi-Turbo, and the 7-Series
based B7.
