As it so happens, I’m currently attending the annual meeting for the BMW Car Club of America. And as you might expect, we all like to talk about our cars. It’s what makes the hobby fun, as we all know too well most of our friends and family probably get sick of us waxing poetic about our project vehicles. Well, I can tell you that if you happened to own a car like this 1987 BMW Alpina B7 Turbo/3 here on eBay, you’d stop most everyone in their tracks and have a small circle form around you immediately. To put it simply, it’s the ultimate E28. 

E28 refers to this particular generation of the 5-Series sedan, made from the early 80s up to 1988. I owned one of these classic,  boxy German sedans for a while, and it was truly a pleasant car to own. Now, I didn’t have an Alpina version, but my 535is was plenty of fun to hustle and more than keep up with modern traffic. The M5 was the top of the heap for many owners in the USA, but a select few took things a step further and secured an extremely limited production Alpina version. Alpina cars like this 5-Series remain highly desirable today, given the modifications made amounted to far more than different graphics and fancy wheels.

Now, those graphics and wheels are iconic elements of any Alpina-modified BMW, but it goes so much further than that. The bucket seats featured unique Alpina fabric (even reproduction fabric today costs big money), along with the Alpina steering wheel, shift knob and dead pedal. The B7 Turbo cranked out an impressive 300 b.h.p., but according to the seller, a few Japanese customers craved more. They wanted the additonal 30 b.h.p. that came on the B7S Alpina versions of the earlier E12 5-Series and E24 6-Series cars, and Alpina agreed to build a mere 30 additional E28s with the bumped up power – and just four of them, including this car, came with a manual transmission.

One of my favorite features of Alpina cars is the electronic boost gauge (also temperature) that sits in place of one of the HVAC vents, as it demonstrates how hard Alpina worked to utilize the factory’s design when making their own modifications. While the E28 M5 will always be a desirable car, I can assure you almost every BMW owner would jump at the chance to park an Alpina in their garage if given the opportunity, but they had better be well-heeled. This car is bid to over $21K and the reserve is unmet, and Alpinas can easily reach numbers in excess of $50K for the right car and condition. If equal measures of exclusivity and performance are on your must-have list, this one’s worth a look.