2024 BMW ALPINA B8 Gran Coupé

The 'I've made it' car

Photos courtesy BMW

BOSTON — BMW makes a bewildering amount of vehicles. To go through them all would take most of this column, so I will try (and likely fail) to make it brief.

The cars are available in numbered series from 1 through 8. For example, there's the four-door BMW 330i sedan or the large, luxurious 740i sedan. Odd-numbered cars typically have four doors while even-numbered ones have two — but not always; we'll get to that.

The SUVs have an X at the front, plus a number denoting size, but from 1 through 8. X3, X5, everything from X1 through X7. Then there are the M cars, which signify something special from BMW's M performance division: M2, M3, M5, M6, and so on. There's one for each number from 2 through 8, except for 7.

Now, things get weird. Though the 3-series typically has four doors and the 4-series comes as a two-door coupe, BMW also makes a four-door 4-series called the Gran Coupe. Get it? Big coupe. These look like a coupe but have four doors, albeit with a severely sloping roof. They look great, sacrificing rear-seat headroom for beautiful lines.

That brings us to my test car this week, which, even more confusingly, has a B designator at the front and the name Alpina. In the same way that the M division denotes performance, B denotes extreme luxury. Alpina used to be a separate company, but BMW bought it recently and brought things in-house, keeping the name. Incidentally, Volvo did something similar with Polestar a few years back before spinning that off into an electric car maker.

With all that figured out, it's time to review the BMW Alpina B8 Gran Coupe. To decipher the name, it's the enlarged, extra-lux, four-door version of the two-door BMW 8-series, which itself can be thought of as the two-door, driver-focused variant of the 7-series.

To simplify it further, the BMW Alpina B8 Gran Coupe is one of the best cars I've ever driven.

Where the M8 coupe is meant to be a hard-core track monster, the B8 is soft and comforting, yet firm in all the right places. It's perfect for a long-distance cruise on the autobahn and almost ideal for a spirited drive down a curvy backroad.

Would the track day-focused M8 be better on that backroad? Maybe, by about two percent, but it would be far worse the rest of the time. And, if we're honest, anyone driving this car wouldn't be able to tell the difference anyway.

Under the hood is an absurdly good 4.4-liter twin-turbo V8, making 612 horsepower and 590 torque from just 2,000 rpm. This is a large, heavy automobile, but those were supercar numbers a generation ago.

It'll launch to 60 mph in 3.3 seconds and on to the quarter mile in 11.5. Max speed? 201 mph. As I said, the B8 is perfect for a long-distance cruise. At warp speed.

And unlike the M8, which howls and screams to let you know it's very fast and sporty, the B8 will quiet down if you want it to, with a simple switch between Comfort and Sport. With that single toggle, the whole car changes personality, like a sleepy golden retriever who loses his mind when you say "dog park?"

The engine, the transmission, the whole chassis and everything else are extraordinarily good, combining to deliver a masterful driver's car with nearly all the comfort you'd ever need. To be sure, something like the 7-series will be more comfortable, but it's not nearly as fun.

And this is where the B8 shines. It's something special, a near-perfect balance of sport and comfort, with a toggle switch that allows you to switch between them.

The regular 8-series isn't exactly roughing it, but Alpina's leather is buttery soft, with exquisite quilting and a fantastic tan and white combination that impressed everyone who saw it. The exterior was coated in an Alpina-specific green metallic paint that worked similarly.

Alpina fits it with a custom exhaust, special aerodynamic elements, tweaks to the suspension, brakes, steering and transmission calibration, different logos, and more. Without driving the regular 8 and the B8 back to back, it's tricky to tell how much difference the software tweaks make, so I trust that they've made it better.

The BMW Alpina B8 Gran Coupe is an I've-Made-It car. It's so you can go into your garage ahead of a long day at the office and have a moment to think: "Oh, right. This is why I work so hard."

Then you fire up that V8, switch to Sport and smile. You earned it.