When M Met N

He’s The Former Boss Of BMW’s M Division, Now Tasked With Bringing Hyundai’s Dynamics Up To Speed.

- Ash Westerman

JUST because you’re one of the most respected and long-serving senior engineers in the global automotive business, and just because you’ve been peeling off hot laps of the famed Nurburgring for over 40 years, does not make you immune from that exchange we’ve surely all had at one point or another with our life partners.

Albert Biermann, 61, who has been serving as Hyundai’s executive vice president for vehicle testing and high-performance development since April 2015, laughs and his eyes sparkle when he recalls how his wife sometimes critiques his driving: “She likes to relax and do her knitting in the passenger seat, so yes, many times, on an autobahn, perhaps in an M5 or M6, maybe at 280km/h and being jolted in a sweeper, she would look at me; ‘Albert, please; is it really necessary to drive this fast?’”

“I would always answer, ‘Yes!’”

Biermann probably has greater justification than most for driving the wheels off any car he jumps in. He was a BMW career man since he joined the company in 1983, and helped shape the M Division’s back catalogue into the icon-studded line-up we now (mostly) revere.

And let’s not overlook the legendary E30generation M3 racecar, which is the most winning tin-top of all time. Biermann is rightly credited as the ‘father’ of that car, and it’s clearly still very close to his heart. The mere mention of it has him beaming and talking eagerly, expansively, about its gestation and subsequent world domination. He holds only one regret when it comes to that little four-pot giant-killer: “I didn’t stash one away for myself in my garage…”