Exclusive Bavarian brand wheels out its hot diesel version of the 4 Series drop-top. Can it live up to the D3 saloon's brilliance? It’s the latest offering from Alpina, the slighly left-field family firm from Bavaria that somehow manages to re-fettle BMWs without annoying the German colossus. Indeed, the D4 Cabriolet is built, along with every other Alpina, on the main BMW production line - and that means that it has to slot into a niche that doesn’t really tread on the toes of the mainstream company’s products. Talk about walking a tightrope; Alpina’s 70-odd engineers must surely be matched by a similarly strong, and equally intelligent batch of product planners.Anyway, it will probably not shock you to read that the D4 gets the same retuned version of BMW’s N57 straight-six twin-turbodiesel as the D3 saloon and touring, and the D4 coupe. It’s not short of heft, then, with 345bhp and 516lb ft of torque - enough for a 0-62mph dash in 5.0 seconds and a top speed of 171mph. Perhaps more importantly, that wall of torque is available between just 1500rpm and 3000rpm, giving the D4 potentially great real-world flexibility.For this you pay a smidge under £55k - which is around 10 grand more than BMW's 435d Cabriolet.from Autocar RSS Feed http://ift.tt/1H6QQ7l
via AGYA
