AC Schnitzer is saved as Dutch AM Group buys the BMW tuner
The BMW tuner that set its own closure date now has a new owner
AC Schnitzer, the Aachen company that has tuned BMWs and MINIs since 1987, has found a buyer six months after announcing it would stop trading at the end of 2026. The KOHL Group transfers the brand to AM Group, a Rotterdam holding, in November. The price is undisclosed. What moves with the name matters more: the technical documentation and TÜV approvals behind every AC Schnitzer part.
AC Schnitzer's closure plan ran out of road after 39 years
In March the KOHL Group announced that AC Schnitzer would wind down by the end of 2026 and sell off its remaining stock. Managing director Rainer Vogel blamed rising development and production costs, tariffs, changing customer habits and the slow retreat of the combustion engine. The sharpest complaint was about paperwork: German approval for a new part could arrive eight or nine months after rival tuners abroad had theirs on sale. Our report on the planned closure noted that KOHL was already talking to possible buyers. November's handover now lands weeks before that deadline.
AM Group brings Urban Automotive, UBC Composites and 360 specialists
AM Group is based in Rotterdam, operates in more than 30 countries and employs around 360 people. Its portfolio includes Absolute Motors, GP Products, the British styling house Urban Automotive and UBC Composites, a carbon-fibre maker in Murr, near Stuttgart. AM Group bought UBC in September 2025 out of self-administered insolvency proceedings, together with its Slovak plant and all 170 employees. AC Schnitzer is the second struggling German specialist the group has picked up in just over a year, and it adds the one skill the others lacked: BMW-specific engineering.
A new German company takes over AC Schnitzer's TÜV approvals
The deal places AC Schnitzer's operations in a new German company, and the existing technical documentation and TÜV certification files transfer to it. For owners, that is the practical point. Wheels, suspension kits, aero parts and engine upgrades in Germany are road-legal on the strength of those approvals, and dealers can keep fitting and servicing them under the same name. Vogel says dealers and customers will still be able to order upgrades, conversions, engine tuning and suspension changes, which the March plan had ruled out beyond December.
Eventuri co-founder Imran Arshad becomes AC Schnitzer's managing director
Imran Arshad, co-founder of the British intake specialist Eventuri and the BMW tuner Evolve Automotive, becomes managing director and will shape product and brand strategy with AM Group. He describes himself as an AC Schnitzer customer. AM Group promises investment in design, research and development and carbon-fibre manufacturing, and co-CEO Luis Carrera says each brand keeps its own identity. The name still carries weight in BMW circles: AC Schnitzer was founded by Willi Kohl and Herbert Schnitzer, who died in June at 85.
AutoNext Take
AM Group has bought the right asset at the right moment. AC Schnitzer's weakness was never its engineering or its name; it was an approval process that left it months behind rivals, and the buyer now owns the very files that took so long to earn, backed by a German carbon plant it already runs. Few tuners change hands with their homologation intact, and that makes this a rescue with substance rather than a logo purchase.
Arshad's first product will show which way the brand leans. If AC Schnitzer's 40th anniversary in 2027 arrives with a new suspension or engine package for the BMW M3 and M5, the Aachen engineering survives; if it arrives with a carbon body kit alone, AM Group has bought a badge for its composites business.
