Back to the good real ALPINA days :tonquesmilie:
Time makes things look better. Alpina never had own engines in the past.
Basically , the "good old days" (and I share your feeling) relied pretty much on the iconic B7 turbo and B10 biturbo, as well as some well packaged swaps of tuned-up BMW engines (M30 in E21 and in E30, M62 in E36, etc... ) but most of the time, it was "just" a proper tuning and polishing of existing BMW engines.
I'm very curious about this rumour. if it's a high output engine, it can only be a turbo-based engine, as this is the only technology which can cope with the current and future emissions constraints. Developing AND producing a new engine costs a huge amount of money. Making such an investment to sell a few cars a year is financially not viable. Or... Alpina will sell its engines to BMW ? or others (Wiessman, Artega, ... )?