Start with what the Alpina B12 is: a 2-door coupé / 4-door saloon (automobile) / saloon / 4-door long wheelbase saloon with 5.0 , built from 1988 to 2001, in the age of turbocharging and the first electronic engine management. What it meant takes a little longer.
The background
The Alpina B12 is a name given to high-performance luxury automobiles manufactured by German automobile manufacturer Alpina. The B12 originally succeeded the B11 4.0 in 1988 which was based on the BMW 7 Series (E32) and was also based on the same car. Subsequent models were based on the BMW 7 Series (E38) and the BMW 8 Series (E31). Production ended in 2001 when the 7 Series (E38) models were discontinued. The B12 was replaced by the B7 (E65) and the B6 (E63).
The engineering
The engine is 5.0 other versions carried different engines, listed in the specification table below. Drive goes through a 4-speed ZF Friedrichshafen / ZF automatic transmission / automatic / 5-speed automatic / 6-speed Getrag manual transmission / manual / 6-speed Shift-Tronic automated manual transmi. The layout matters: a front engine drives the rear wheels, the classic proportion — long bonnet, cabin set back — that most people picture when they picture a sports saloon or a grand tourer. These are manufacturer figures carried by Wikipedia and Wikidata, not road-test measurements.
Where it sits
In the Alpina line-up the Alpina B12 has a clear place: it handed the line to the Alpina B7 (E65) / Alpina B6 (E63); the factory was Buchloe, Germany. The cars a buyer would have weighed it against include the Ferrari F40, the Mazda MX-5, the Lexus LS. Its Alpina stablemates include the Alpina B10 and the Alpina B10 (E39).
Owning one today
There is no federal ownership record for the Alpina B12 — it predates the complaint database or was never sold in the United States — so MotorJury publishes no running-cost figure for it. For a car of this age the price is set by the collector market and the condition of the individual example, not by a formula.