We’re proud to have clients across the globe, and our cars live all around the world – from Dubai to Dublin, Melbourne to Munich, Boston to Bahrain.

One of our favourite cars is a B7s Turbo E24 6 series, which came to us from Dubai. Our client was Dubai based at the time, and having acquired the car in auction, wanted to oversee the painting of the car, which therefore had to be done in Dubai. However, he then decided to complete the rest of the work at Munich Legends, and duly shipped the car to us.

One major issue was that the car was a non-runner, with the achilles heel of that series Alpina – the Pierburg injection system – considered to be the most likely culprit. The ML restoration team were tasked with diagnosing and rectifying the issue, restoring the underside and engine bay, refreshing all the electrics, interior and mechanicals.

Back in the 80s, Alpina adapted the standard M30 engine, designing their own engine management to work with the added turbo and bring about that particular alchemy that makes the B7s turbo such a fabulous car. However, Alpina 2019 seemed particularly reluctant to help the owner (or anyone else) and could provide no replacement parts, technical help or drawings, repair service or advice. So, and alternative had to be found.

In conjuction with Motec, a new bespoke stand-alone engine management was designed to replace the original Pierburg system, and finally the B7s turbo came back to life. The stark choice was made between keeping the car original (the ideal outcome) but effectively an unusable non-runner, or to find an alternative solution that kept the B7s turbo as faithful as possible to the factory spec – but actually worked and ran. We didn’t envy the owner that choice, but, in the end, a stunning Alpina B7s turbo drove out of the Munich Legends restoration shop, and went on to fetch what we believe is a world record price in a Sotheby’s auction in Paris.