Alpina B3 S
Alpina
Alpina
The Alpina B3 and B3 S is a series of high performance compact executive cars manufactured by German automobile manufacturer Alpina from 1999 to 2006 based on the BMW 3 Series (E46). The B3 was available in coupé, saloon, convertible and station wagon body styles. The more powerful B3 S was introduced at the 2002 Paris Motor Show.
From the Wikipedia article Alpina B3 (E46), CC BY-SA.
Among the 31 Alpina entries in the MotorJury library, the Alpina B3 S holds its own page in a catalogue built to record every car ever made, from series production to one-off concepts. The record places its introduction in 1999. The photography on this page is hotlinked from Wikimedia Commons under an open licence, with the photographer credited on every frame.
To read the Alpina B3 S properly it helps to place it in its decade. The 1990s were the decade of refinement — airbags and ABS became universal, Japanese build quality set the world standard, and the modern SUV segment was effectively invented. Any car launched into that world was shaped by it — by what materials, engineering and regulation allowed, and by what buyers of the day demanded. Its direct contemporaries in this catalogue, introduced within three years of it, include the Honda Honda S2000, the Toyota Toyota Yaris, the Škoda Auto Škoda Fabia — the cars a buyer of the period would actually have cross-shopped.
On paper, the Alpina B3 S reads like this: the record lists its engine as 3.4 L E5/1 I6; kerb weight is recorded at successor = Alpina B3 (E90); drive goes through 6-speed Getrag manual transmission / manual / 5-speed automatic transmission / automatic; the layout is Front-engine, rear-wheel-drive. Every figure above is a manufacturer specification carried by the Wikipedia infobox or the open Wikidata record for this model — nothing on this page is estimated, and where a source is silent the row simply does not appear.
Within Alpina's own catalogue the Alpina B3 S sits alongside the Alpina B10, the Alpina B10 (E39), the Alpina B10 Bi-Turbo, the Alpina B12. The record names the Alpina B3 (E36) as its predecessor and the Alpina B3 (E90) as its successor, fixing its place in the model line's chronology. Design is credited to class = Compact executive car (D). Assembly is recorded at Germany: Buchloe.
This library is generated, verified and rebuilt from the open record on every deploy. The catalogue skeleton comes from Wikidata, specifications from Wikipedia's infoboxes under CC BY-SA, photography from Wikimedia Commons under each file's own licence, and the ownership data from United States federal safety records. Nothing is written by hand and nothing is invented: every fact on this page traces to a public source, and every page is rebuilt nightly as those sources improve. Errors in the source record will appear here too — and disappear the night the source is corrected.
Most car databases stop at series production. This one deliberately does not, because concept cars, racing specials and cancelled prototypes are where the industry thinks out loud — the ideas tested in public years before they reach a showroom. Holding them beside the production cars they inspired makes the lineage legible: nearly every landmark road car in this library has a concept ancestor somewhere in the catalogue, and the connections run through the era links on every page.
A specification sheet is only half a car's story. The other half — what breaks, what it costs to keep, which years to avoid — lives in MotorJury's ownership database, computed nightly from federal complaint and recall records and EPA economy data. Where the Alpina B3 S was sold in the United States, its model years carry full ownership verdicts there.
Specifications come from the Wikipedia infobox for this model (CC BY-SA) and the open Wikidata record, and are shown only where a source actually carries them — nothing here is estimated. Figures are manufacturer specifications, not measured results.
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Ownership verdicts are computed from NHTSA complaint and recall records plus EPA economy data, re-priced for your country. Verdicts are published per model year as the data is ingested — browse them live, or open the true-cost calculator to price any year yourself.
Contemporaries from other marques, introduced within three years of this car.