I like Powerslide

[visionaut]

The roundel change to the sans-serif font was in 1963. But it was always black with the blue/white center ( just a darker shade of blau than the pale 1953 version).

 

Both of your old Nardi Alpina buttons are just blau mit weiss, which is very cool/distinct - with JPs having the earlier serif BMW…

 

Was the solid color roundel an Alpina or a Nardi touch? I suspect the latter due to coloring of the Nardi logo.

Tom

[Flunder]

1966

 

Manufacturers of automobiles are an arrogant lot. The world’s top OEMs control vast amounts of capital and employ engineers, production gurus,  leading designers and some of the very best marketing and executive talent in the world. At the pinnacle of the industry in 1966 were the renowned marques like Porsche and Daimler Benz.

 

But in 1966 Ferrari really stood alone at the very peak of automotive prestige, like Zeus on the summit of Olympus. Its industrial know how existed on a small scale, artisanal level. But for its foundry operations, casting and forging, its knowledge of metallurgy and precision machining  its skills approached the sublime. But arrogance was the long suit in the good hand dealt to Maranello in the preceding years of F1 wins and astonishingly beautiful road cars.

 

In 1966 Ferrari’s  greatest offering for the true motor enthusiast was the 275 GTB. The lines of the newly updated 3.3 berlinetta had been drawn by the design house headed by Battista “Pinin” Farina. In its revised long nose, torque tube specification the GTB surpassed the sublime combining taut natural beauty packaged in such a way as to communicate power and barely restrained aggression.

 

But across the spectrum of the newly introduced drivers cars in 1966,  the BMW 1600-2 was actually the big new thing. It would propel BMW from the brink of liquidation to a position of financial power and global industry leadership. A modest but tightly drawn, three box design exercise in two door coupe form the newly introduced 1600-2 had a less-is-more, bauhaus industrial art form appeal that immediately dated the gross excesses of Detroit design and made even the voluptuous extravagances of the Italian design houses appear less relevant. And to some who knew a lot about good drivers cars, they suddenly looked completely irrelevant.

 

Why? Because the simple design of the 1966 BMW 1600-2 disguised an automotive platform capable of very fast work in the real world. Whether puttering around in town or driving at triple digit speeds over the most challenging roads in the hands of even the most accomplished of drivers an Alpina 02 could hold its own. And it took surprisingly little time for Gert Hack at AMuS and David E. Davis at C&D to get the word out to consumers about the big new thing.

 

An Alpina press car prepared to a high state of tune so excited Paul Frere, a noted automotive journalist and test driver of the fastest and most powerful Porsche prototypes of the era, to enthusiastically report its  “shattering performance” delivered in a utilitarian real-world package. He demonstrated his own Alpina 02’s prowess with comparative timed laps at Spa Francorchamps against many of the best others had to offer.

 

Ferrari had quite rightly adopted the arrogance of an industry power house.  For its road cars the knowledge and acclaim gained from racing made its undeniably beautiful automotive offerings highly attractive to a clientele nurtured and carefully selected from the elites of titled European aristocracy, powerful industrialists and Hollywood screen stars. But within a year the youth of this demographic, the new generation of wealth and privilege, would be seen in all the best places across Europe behind the leather wrapped steering wheels of the BMW ALPINA 02.  A fully tuned ALPINA only came to be owned without the stigma of low cost. The entry fee for Der Souverain Stile, as set by Burkard Bovensiepen, the man who created the modern Alpina brand and the son of a middelstand family in Buchloe, approached that of an elegant boulevardier E9 or a even a good raspy-throated 911.

But an Alpina  02 was completely different. It was the big new thing. It was built to special order, often requiring extensive personal consultation and long waits. Customization, personalization, Q ship good looks, the antithesis of overblown design. Shattering performance. Ample luggage space! The Alpina 02 was the big new thing for its time.

 

In 1966 every standard issue 275 GTB emerged from Modena with equipment from select suppliers whose elite brands were in and of themselves highly prestigious. And so it was in 1966 that a new long nose GTB came equipped with beautiful Campagnolo rims cast in Elektron alloy, Koni shocks painted in their unique shade of orangey-red, multiple Weber carburetors from Bologna, lighting from Marchal, tyres from Michelin and wood rimmed steering wheels supplied by you know who and close fitting bucket seats. These brands were well understood by Ferrari to be emblematic of the very highest order  of performance and quality, the very same attributes that the Ferrari brand had conveyed to enthusiasts for the past 20 years.

 

Almost overnight all of these same category leaders had like Campagnolo, Koni and Nardi:Personal had products available in the aftermarket to provide the highest quality, name-brand performance solutions to drivers of the new BMW 1600-2.

And both of these performance icons, the GTB and the 1600-2 shared in common a most distinctive design element. Guess what?

 

But a shared design touch on this disparate pair of new 1966 performance models made only one of the two world famous.

 

Round tail lights.

 

 

Edited November 4 by Flunder

[NickVyse]

On 10/23/2024 at 8:26 PM, visionaut said:

The roundel change to the sans-serif font was in 1963. But it was always black with the blue/white center ( just a darker shade of blau than the pale 1953 version).

 

Late to this fantastic thread. From my experience with NKs the font/logo change was sometime in 1965/early 66.

 

Something not picked up on in the pics of the great bat cheeked car is the coil...

 

 

 

It's a ducellier sports coil - which would make sense as it's a French car. My '67 came with one and I bought another NOS recently.

 

 

[visionaut]

1 hour ago, NickVyse said:

Late to this fantastic thread. From my experience with NKs the font/logo change was sometime in 1965/early 66.

 

Nick, I got the date from BMW.com…

[NickVyse]

It's not right, every NK from '65 or before, including mine, has the serif badge with gold outline. And every NK from '66, including mine, has the later non-serif badge with silver outline. May be there was an overlap of useage by the company as a whole, or someone had already ordered 3 years of NK badging 🙂 A question for another thread, if there isn't one already.

 

The model number on the back of NKs went from gold to silver at the same time.

 

 

[visionaut]

It says Introduction. It takes awhile to roll it out, no? So 65 sounds about right. And they likely had a bunch of stock..  Maybe only new models/things got tit initially? ( Does NK badge attach like 02 badge?)

 

[JohnP_02]

I agree with Nick. That BMW graphic is not very precise, it’s inaccurate basically. Its possible it took a bit to roll out or they continued to use the gold serif font on NK’s until they ran out, a practice we know was very common during the early years. 
 

Here is my latest find, a 380mm 1964 Nardi with a cool Petri horn button I have never seen before. 
 

 

I had been looking for one of these early Nardi wheels as I think Alpina used them on occasion just before they started commissioning Alpina branded wheels. The horn button on this one is just a bonus! 
 

[NickVyse]

37 minutes ago, visionaut said:

It says Introduction. It takes awhile to roll it out, no? So 65 sounds about right. And they likely had a bunch of stock..  Maybe only new models/things got tit initially? ( Does NK badge attach like 02 badge?)

 

 

Yes, attaches the same way. The 1600 replaced the 1500 in '65, so that's that theory scuppered 🙂 I think basically BMW have it wrong as far as useage goes, it's not the first time. Perhaps it's when the new badge design was first shown to the board, who knows, doesn't really matter 👍 The 700 (with serif/gold) finished production in '65, so may be they timed it with that, along with the introduction of the 1600-2?

Edited November 5 by NickVyse

[uai]

18 minutes ago, JohnP_02 said:

I agree with Nick. That BMW graphic is not very precise, it’s inaccurate basically. Its possible it took a bit to roll out or they continued to use the gold serif font on NK’s until they ran out, a practice we know was very common during the early years. 
 

Here is my latest find, a 380mm 1964 Nardi with a cool Petri horn button I have never seen before. 

 

I had been looking for one of these early Nardi wheels as I think Alpina used them on occasion just before they started commissioning Alpina branded wheels. The horn button on this one is just a bonus! 

Does it have a horn contact in the right place. I once had a NOS 380 Nardi that was from a BMW 700 that had no horn contact which would explain the non-matching Horn button

[JohnP_02]

Uli, I’m not familiar with the hub at all. I asked Hans and he wasn’t either and we don’t think it’s a 700 hub. Weird because it has a BMW horn button. Thoughts?

 

 

[visionaut]

29 minutes ago, NickVyse said:

The 700 (with serif/gold)

I love those. Especially the manufacturer identification on the reverse. The paler Blau. And that they have the 02-compatible attachment pins…

 

Still searching…

 

[NickVyse]

Back of my Touring 🙂 (after the sahara rain)

 

[visionaut]

Okay - STEERING this discussion ROUNDel back  to the topic (or thereabouts):

 

 

This one’s pretty cool. Was this color rare for Alpina? (Without a number it’s hard for me to find in B&W pics…🙃)

Nice wheels, but they’re no Millerighe...

 

[uai]

2 hours ago, JohnP_02 said:

Uli, I’m not familiar with the hub at all. I asked Hans and he wasn’t either and we don’t think it’s a 700 hub. Weird because it has a BMW horn button. Thoughts?

 

 

 

Looks like the 700 wheel I had with a retrofitted Horn Contact.
I still have somthing similar. A one off handmade 700 wheel with an emlem in the middle but no horn contact.

[Flunder]

The OEM color on that green 16oo race car shown above is Tundra, which for me is one of the very best colors from the NK era.

 

The wheels are 13 inch tri-sectionals manufactured by 02 race privateer Berndt Limmer. They pre-date the existence of both Alpina and BBS tri-sectional wheels.

These Limmers were however used extensively by Alpina before they had their own “petal” design tri-sectional wheels. The use of Limmerfelgen is another example of Alpina using un-branded and private label products in the early days of the Alpina parts program.

 

Note the blacked out centers of the Limmer tri-sectional wheels on the 1600-2 team car in this most famous of all the many Alpina product line promo pics:

 

 

Here is an old Limmer from the late 60s fresh out of the box after having been restored by BBS America 15 years ago.  These magnesium centered wheels are drilled 4x100 and were originally 8  and 9 inch for an unknown BMW -2.

 

Limmer sold his wheel business to BBS. The Limmer design is far better, to my eye, than the now famous BBS E30 design iteration that found such broad market appeal.

 

 

In the next image Limmerfelgen are shown in action on a beautifully turned out mouse flared Chamonix 02 that visionaut posted earlier in the thread. I think that this airport-runway, race course action pic is from back in 1968.

 

Also noteworthy are the side exit exhaust and long (for the period) back braces on the roll hoop. 

 

I think that the famous Tundra Green race car was campaigned by a privateer (not Alpina) but was nevertheless very successful in winning races.

 

I’ve been told that it is now owned by a member of the club in Germany. It has an envious array of Alpina period correct bits and race equipment.

 

It is a famous car  and there are literally hundreds of images of it online.

 

Rather than clutter up the thread by posting all those pics of it (they are easily found) it  would interesting to see only period (NOT modern) detailed pics of engine, interior, trunk/fuel tank, brakes etc, if they can be found along with some commentary to make things interesting.

 

Edited November 5 by Flunder