Roland A. Bussink commissioned HWA AG – a company that develops components for AMG. Hans-Werner Aufrecht is the founder of HWA AG, as well as one of the founders of AMG. Officially, Mercedes still don’t have a Speedster as the bespoke AMG GTR is not actually developed by AMG. However, HWA’s connection to AMG makes it the next best thing.
The AMG GTR Speedster draws inspiration from the SLR Stirling Moss, as well as Formula One. Its most distinctive feature is the Y-shaped “Speedbow”. It starts from where the windshield used to be – you still get a small Barchetta-style windshield – and finishes behind the headrests, connecting with the rear of the car. It bears striking resemblance to the Halo used in current Formula One cars. In addition to giving it unique and striking new looks, the element provides structural rigidity.
Initially, the car started life as an AMG GT R Convertible, which made the conversion slightly easier, as less cutting was required. But it’s not just a matter of chopping the roof off. There are many other chassis enhancements, ensuring superior structural rigidity.
You can choose to have the 4.0-liter twin-turbo V-8 in stock trim – 577 horsepower and 516 pound-feet (700 Nm) or you can have HWA bring it up to a mind-blowing 850 horsepower and 767 pound-feet (1,040 Nm).
For comparison, the McLaren Elva engine is generating 803 horsepower, while the Aston Martin V-12 Speedster – “only” 700. There will be only five copies of the Bussink GTR SpeedLegend.
How Much More Power Does The HPE1000 Package Supplement?
The Challenger Super Stock in the ‘stock’ condition makes 807 horses and 707 pound-feet of twist from its 6.2-liter, V-8 supercharged HEMI engine. Power is sent to the rear wheels via an eight-speed TorqueFlite automatic gearbox.
Hennessey equipped the HPE1000 performance upgrade package that bumps up these figures to 1,035 horses at 6,500 rpm and 948 pound-feet of torque at 4,200 rpm.
A dyno test, however, revealed that the car lays down 810 horses and 732 pound-feet of twist at the rear wheels. These figures are 110 rear-wheel horsepower and 84 pound-feet of rear-wheel torque more than the standard model.
The stock Super Stock takes 3.25 seconds to sprint to 60 mph from rest, but Hennessey hasn’t revealed the figures for this one. It will certainly be quicker, perhaps clocking times in the whereabouts of three seconds.
A lot of other modifications include:
Lower and Upper Pulley Upgrade
Ported Supercharger Snout
Stainless-Steel Long Tube Headers
High-Flow Catalytic Converters, Mid Pipes, Fuel Injectors, and Air Induction System
Crank Case Ventilation System
HPE Calibration Upgrade
Are There Any Changes To The Exterior Or Interior?
This package is all about performance upgrades, so there are no changes made to the cabin or the body. A few Hennessey and HPE1000 exterior badges, however, are placed. This isn’t a limited-edition package, but serial-numbered plaques are also pasted.
The Challenger Super Stock is based on the Redeye Widebody, so it looks exactly the same as that one, but with more performance. Fun fact: Have you ever wondered why an 800+ horsepower beast is called “Super Stock”? The name comes from the Super Stock class of vehicles in drag racing. These were essentially sleeper cars – vehicles that looks regular but were hardcore racers at heart.
Conclusion
The package comes with a 2-year/24,000-mile warranty. There’s no word on the pricing of this package. The 2021 Dodge Challenger Super Stock sits at top of the Challenger hierarchy and starts at $81,945 at the time of penning this article.
While the stock BMW 128ti produces an already impressive 265 horsepower (195 kilowatts) and 195 pound-feet (400 Nm), allowing for a 5.6-second sprint to 60 mph (97 km/h), the specialists from Dahler have decided it could use a bit more. The Dahler 128tii features a new stainless steel exhaust system with active valves and ceramic-coated tailpipes and an ECU tune.
These tweaks alone bring the numbers up to 313 horsepower (233 kilowatts) and 367 pound-feet (500 Nm).
This makes the 128tii more powerful than the top-of-the-line BMW M135i, which has 306 horsepower (225 kilowatts) and 332 pound-feet (450 Nm). The only downside in comparison to the M135i is the absence of all-wheel-drive. The gearbox is still the ZF eight-speed. With that being said, the Dahler 128tii will have a weight advantage as well, which would make for an interesting drag race.
Additionally, Dahler has fitted the BMW hot hatch with a coil-over suspension, which allows for compression and rebound dampening, as well as height adjustability. The Swiss tuners decided that the stock brakes were impressive enough, so they left them untouched.
The Visuals
The brakes may be stock, but they are now “hiding” behind new 20×8-inch forged wheels in all four corners, wrapped in 245/30 Michelin Pilot Sport 4S rubber. Other exterior features include the new more aggressive front splitter and a roof-mounted rear wing. The overall aesthetics are finished by a silver racing stripe on top, which is off-set to the left and spans the entire length of the car. All the visual enhancements make the 128tii look even more aggressive than the top M135i model.
Interior changes are a bit more subtle, but just as tastefully executed. They comprise of new aluminum pedals, new floor mats, and new upholstery for the seats, which now feature substantial amounts of Alcantara leather.
Conclusion
What Dahler has shown with their 128tii is that even a hot hatchback, which already has some zest in it, can be tastefully modified. Yes, it’s easy to add more power, now more than ever, as well as to install an aggressive body kit, but what the Swiss tuner has done is retain the balance between aggressive and subtle, which the normal car has. Essentially, they have created a front-wheel-drive version of the all-wheel-drive M135i, which is awesome. Sure putting the power down is easier when it goes to all four wheels, but front-wheel-drive is kind of a trademark of the hot hatchback. What Dahler has made is a BMW M135i that’s a bit more old-school. It’s still automatic only though.
While you cannot see any new exterior body-kit because there isn’t one, the Pogea Racing Maserati GranCabrio does differ a bit compared with the stock car.
After replacing old coilovers with new ones that managed to drop the car by almost 2 inches, Pogea installed all-new wheels.
Called the “Jules 21” (c’mon, guess the diameter if you can), the new wheels are really cool. Not only in how they look (stunning), but the technology and materials used as well. These lightweight units were formed of special aluminum alloys “using a state-of-the-art manufacturing process”. Pogea did not detail the development process of the wheels, but they did say that the new wheels are shod in Michelin Pilot Sport 4S tires – 245/30ZR21 front and 325/25ZR21 – back.
Interior
To complement the subtle exterior additions, Pogea Racing offers a wide variety of interior modifications as well. It actually did not do much with this particular GranCabrio, but if you’d like, Pogea Racing can change some stock inlays with carbon fiber parts and upholster any imaginable surface with the best possible leather.
Drivetrain and Performance
The 4.7-liter, V-8 in the GranCabrio and the GranTurismo was never really a powerhouse an enthusiast would like to find in a car of this magnitude. Yet, it sounds biblical, and with its naturally-aspirated nature, it is one of only a few that offer that raw power and torque. Pogea Racing did not have to do a lot to improve its 460 horsepower.
In fact, the Germans included a sports air filter and remapped the ECU. This released a bit more of that naturally aspirated grunt.
Now, the GranCabrio’s 4.7-liter, V-8 develops 480 horsepower and 393 pound-feet of torque. This is not a massive upgrade, but it complements the other subtle modifications quite well.
No wonder this particular sports car can go above 186 mph. Actually, it could probably hit 190 mph.
Final Thoughts
While Pogea Racing obviously did not overwhelm the GranCabrio and the GranTurismo with changes, the simple matter of a fact is that under German tuning guidance, the GranTurismo feels a tad fresher. Maybe even modern. As one of the latest sports cars powered by a naturally-aspirated engine, the GranCabrio and the GranTurismo have the allure of a proper Italian thoroughbred. Well, while I am sure that all of us like the GranTurismo very much, Maserati does not plan to offer a successor. Instead, expect the Alfieri (probably smaller than the GranTurismo) to appear in 2022 or so. Up until then, reach out to Pogea Racing because this company will make your Maser much better.
“From a young age I was interested in cars, and I never had the intention of going into the family business of making typewriters,” recalls Bovensiepen in an interview with Classic Driver magazine back in 2015. “I was able to convince my father to let me use a small outbuilding on his business premises, and first I modified my own car, a BMW 1500. There was only one tine Solex carburettor, but it was otherwise a good engine – so I added dual-Weber carbs, which gave it a 0-60 mph time of 13 seconds, three seconds quicker than the base model.”
Alpina originally started out as a typewriter manufacturer and then tried to move into textiles without too much success. Burkard Bovensiepen, however, was getting noticed as his tune-ups impressed the era’s automotive journalists as well as BMW.
BMW Sales chief Paul G. Hahnemann developed a particular interest in Burkard’s work, which in turn lead to BMW’s decision to offer full factory guarantee to every BMW vehicle tuned by Alpina. And so, come January 1965, Alpina Burkard Bovensiepen KG company was established in the Bavarian town of Kaufbeuren with eight employees.
Three years later, Alpina goes racing. Between 1968 and 1973, the tuner enjoys a successful era in motorsport, securing the services of famed drivers such as Derek Bell, Harald Ertl, James Hunt, Jacky Ickx, Nikki Lauda, and Hans Stuck along the way. It all culminated in 1970, when Alpina clinched the European Touring Car Championship, the 24 Hours of Spa-Francorchamps, along with other local German competitions.
The ties with BMW get tighter in the early ’70s. The carmaker tasks Alpina to design and develop a lightweight version of the 3.0 CS and the 3.0 CSL is born. The Alpina version of the CSL developed 250 horsepower and could go from zero to 100 kph (62 mph) in 6.7 seconds on to a top speed of 243 kph (151 mph). This was possible through the use of forged pistons, three Weber carburettors, a new camshaft, and a custom exhaust system.
Alpina also powers through the 1973 oil crisis without staff layoffs and in 1975, it partners up with select BMW dealers to develop its own network in Germany, along with importers in England and Switzerland, and later on in Japan.
In 1978, Alpina introduces three cars – B6, B7 Turbo, and B7 Turbo Coupe – and they’re all fitted with a world-first feature: a fully-electronic, computerized ignition system. Five years later, in 1985, the German Kraftfahrtbundesamt (Ministry of Transport in English) officially recognizes Alpina as an automobile manufacturer.
The best 4-door in the world
That’s what car journalist and racing driver Paul Frere wrote about the BMW Alpina B10 BiTurbo in his review for Road & Track. Starting from the pedestrian 535i as the donor car, Alpina worked its way up the performance ladder by completely removing and tearing apart the engine only to rebuilt it after.
Forged pistons were added, as well as remachined combustion chambers, a new camshaft, and twin Garrett T25 turbochargers that offers as much as 11.4 psi of boost. Power? 360 horses at 6,000 rpm. Torque? 384 pound-feet at 4,000 rpm. Crazy? Of course. But not crazier than the fact that 90-percent of all torque was unlocked at 2,500 rpm. For this reason, the standard gearbox had to be replaced by a five-speed aggregate supplied by Getrag, together with a high-friction clutch.
What really set Alpina apart from other tuners was its attention to other areas of the car, not just the engine.
“In those days, the other tuners only cared about having the most powerful engine; the rest of the car was not very harmonious. With Alpina, it was always the complete package, and remains so today. We designed the cars to be used all year round as daily drivers, but to still have the performance of a weekend sports car,” Bovensiepen points out in the same interview with Classic Driver.
And what better example than the B10 BiTurbo? With the engine equation sorted out, Alpina went on to tweak the car in accordance with the newfound grunt.
The suspension was more firm, the spoiler and air dam were actually there for functional purposes, not just for show, and the 17-inch wheels got wider in the back (9.5 inches, compared to 8.5 inches in the front). All this coupled with the extensive mods brought to the engine made the B10 quicker in a standing half-mile than the likes of Ferrari 348, Porsche Carrera 2, and Acura NSX.
In 1990, Alpina had 120 employees and the word-firsts kept coming: in 1992, the company develops an electronic clutch management system (Shift-tronic), then in 1993 it coins the Switch-tronic, which let the driver shift gears using buttons on the back of the steering wheel, a la Formula 1. 1995 is the year Alpina introduces the Supercat, an electrically-heated metal catalytic converter as part of a joint project with BMW.
Cars, however, continue to be at the forefront of Alpina’s work. At the 1999 Geneva Motor Show the Alpina D10 BiTurbo makes its debut as the most powerful diesel saloon in the world. In 2002, Alpina launches the Roadster V8 based on BMW’s Z8 roadster, then the performance car charge continues with the B7 (featuring a mechanically-driven radial compressor), the B5 – considered by many the spiritual successor of the B10 BiTurbo, and the B3.
As it looks to keep up with the trends, Alpina launches the XD3, its first SUV built, of course, on the bones of the BMW X3. The XD3 would pave the way for the more recent S and the XB7 SUVs.
Looking back at Alpina’s work – which now stretches over more than 50 years, there’s only one word that could sum it all up: continuity. The company has always kept its path and never went astray from developing subtly-restyled cars that fill the performance gap in those areas where BMW wouldn’t or couldn’t deliver.
Today, Alpina delivers about 1,700 cars every year. Not bad, considering it all started with a young man who only wanted to make his BMW faster.
