Lake Como Automotive Week 2026 assessment: classics, ideas and crowdpleasers

For over a century, the lawns of the Grand Lodge Villa d’Este on Lake Como have hosted a number of the rarest traditional vehicles in existence. The lodge’s Concorso d’Eleganza traces its roots again to 1929, when it started as a showcase for coachbuilders – the carrozzerie – on the shores of Lake Como.

At its peak, greater than 100 entries – from Pininfarina to Ghia, Touring, Castagna and Stabilimenti Farina – would jostle for consideration, as sports activities vehicles designed like spaceships and streamlined saloons have been paraded on the lawns between Villa d’Este and the green-blue water of Lake Como.

At the moment, the BMW Group-sponsored Concorso d’Eleganza Villa d’Este is absolutely no completely different; it celebrates a number of the best one-offs of the previous century whereas serving as a platform for BMW to tear the covers off its newest ideas and creations. Wallpaper* was there to discover the 2026 version (15-17 Might).

‘The occasion has been going for over 100 years now, and has all the time been about these incredible one-off traditional vehicles that I am all the time amazed by,’ says BMW Group’s design director Adrian van Hooydonk. ‘For the final ten to fifteen years, we have been making an attempt so as to add to it within the type of idea automobiles. It was fairly daunting at first, since you meet the folks that accumulate these vehicles and know their vehicles, all of them analogue, all of them hand-built, after which we are available in with one thing fancy and new, however through the years, folks have come to understand that.’

From 2019, Como gained one other automobile occasion within the form of Fuoriconcorso. Set within the steep environment of the Seventeenth-century Villa del Grumello, this 12 months’s Fuoriconcorso celebrated German engineering beneath the banner ‘KraftMeister’. A stark distinction from the oh-so-Italian setting and the themes of previous years.

The place the Villa d’Este Concorso trades on coachbuilt class, Fuoriconcorso leans extra into automotive obscurities, youngtimers and cult classics. Assume restomods and Nineties tuner vehicles, alongside behemoths just like the 700-hp, twin-turbo V12 Mercedes-Maybach Exelero from 2005 and the 1970 psychedelic Porsche 917-043 ‘Hippie Automotive’.

With world premieres from Brabus, Alpina, Bizzarrini and Kimera Automobili, the 2 exhibits are the primary pillars of Como Automotive Week; a sequence of occasions that rivals Monterey as probably the most compelling date on the worldwide concours calendar.

Referred to as the Imaginative and prescient BMW Alpina, the modern, 5.2m-long automobile leads with an exaggerated, forward-leaning shark-nose, referencing the 1978 Alpina E24 B7. Energy comes from a non-hybrid V8, and the 20-spoke wheels anchor it to Alpina’s non secular dwelling of Buchloe.

However the four-seat coupé is not a manufacturing mannequin and certain by no means will probably be. The primary BMW-made Alpina to make it to market will probably be a 7-series tremendous saloon, full with a V8 at its coronary heart. ‘We’re not going to flood the market with Alpina merchandise,’ assures van Hooydonk. ‘We’re going to take a cautious strategy, we’re going to have some endurance and begin one after the other, after which construct it slowly.’

With the BMW Group’s newest marque positioned to fill the slightly massive ‘white area’ between the most costly BMW and fellow group marque Rolls-Royce, Alpina ‘was and is about quiet luxurious’, van Hooydonk tells me on a terrace overlooking the glowing water. The refined BMWs ‘[were] a lot quicker than the usual product, however not ostentatious’, vehicles, by which ‘you would go virtually undercover’. You’ll be able to learn extra concerning the Imaginative and prescient BMW Alpina right here.

BMWAlpina.com, @BMWAlpina.official