The beginner’s guide to Alpine

In many ways, Alpine is a bit like a French AMG. Both started off as an independent concern, taking the solid mechanicals of a major home-grown manufacturer and extracting something special enough for the whole world – and indeed said major manufacturer – to sit up, take notice and team up. And eventually buy the smaller company outright, come to think of it.

But the more obvious apples-to-pommes comparison is that Alpine’s pretty much a French version of Lotus... which makes them Lavender?

In any case, choosing finesse and fibreglass over figures and brute force is a mirror image of Colin Chapman’s modus operandi. And Alpine was doing it both independently of Lotus and concurrently. No cribbing of notes going on here.

Also, for anyone snickering about the whole ‘solid mechanicals’ bit, do remember this is the company behind the unkillable Renault 4, as well as the 4CV. In fact, it was Alpine founder Jean Rédélé’s success with modifying, rebodying and racing 4CVs that kick-started Alpine back in the 1950s.

Logic dictates that you can’t win a race that you don’t finish because your car has broken down. And that goes double in the car-killing world of rallying. So when Renault mechanicals propel a car to a World Rally Championship win, we’d say they’re probably solid enough. And we’d definitely say that Alpine knew how to make the most of them.

Alpine A110s are built on the outskirts of Dieppe, in Normandy. And for those of you who aren’t British, a) sorry for invading your country that time, and b) Normandy is the northwestern part of France that faces the coast of southern England. The distance across the English Channel is so short that there’s actually a direct ferry from Dieppe to England, making port in a little place called Newhaven. If this is the first you’ve heard of Newhaven, it’s also likely the last you will hear of it.

Moving on. The Alpine range now also includes the A290 hot hatch, and that car is built in the same factory in Douai as its Renault 5 sibling. That's still in Northern France, but around two hours east towards Belgium.

And although A110 production is set to end in just 12 months time, Dieppe will then be tasked with building the all-electric A390 crossover. Wonder what the lightweight sports car fans will make of that...

Ah, kind of answered that in response to the previous question, didn't we? Worth coming back to though, because Alpine has now confirmed that for the final year of production you'll be able to buy a standard 248bhp A110, an A110 GTS with 296bhp, or an A110 R 70 with all of the carbon fibre and lots of special badging to celebrate Alpine's 70th anniversary.

There's also the A290 EV hot hatch, which uses the boxy underpinnings of the reborn Renault 5 but gets an uprated motor to produce either 178bhp in GT form, or 217bhp in full-fat GTS form. Oh, and it weighs just under 1,500kg.

Well, there are only two cars, so this shouldn't take long. The cheapest is the A290, with prices in the UK kicking off at £33,500.

The most expensive is the A110, because although prices start at £55,160, the A110 R 70 tops out at a whopping £103,345. Yikes. That's a lot of cash for a car with a 1.8-litre turbo four-pot.

Well, that rather depends on how you define ‘Alpine’.

See, Alpine took over reins of the Renault F1 team a while back, which means the upcoming Alpine A525 Formula 1 car should be the absolute fastest Alpine, even if the team has been a bit pants in recent years. And Alpine does build it itself – albeit in Enstone, rather than Dieppe. You can’t buy one though, or drive one, or even sit in one if you're a mere mortal like us. 

So, at least in terms of an Alpine you have a hope of driving, the limited-run A110 R Ultime is the pinnacle. It still uses the standard car's 1.8-litre four-pot, but in the Ultime it's tuned to make 345bhp and is paired with lightweight forged wheels, extra aero, AP Racing brakes and an uprated six-speed gearbox. Heck, that might not be all that much outright power, but it'll lap the Nürburgring in 7m 15s, so it's very nearly as quick as a Lexus LFA Nürburgring Edition.

If it is outright power in an A110 bodyshell that you're after though, there's also the racing spec A110 GT4 Evo with up to 400bhp, while the A110 Pikes Peak from 2023 had its wick turned up to 500bhp.

There’s a decent argument that right now is the best moment for Alpine – being handed the reins of Renault’s motorsport endeavours shows it’s finally getting the recognition it deserves in the Renault Group.

It's a bit of a shame that the A424 hypercar didn't perform slightly better in its debut WEC season, but this moment would never have happened without some of Alpine’s best motorsport moments of the past – world rally wins in 1971 and 1973, as well as an outright Le Mans victory in 1978.

For us, nothing beats the sight of the original A110 in the Monte Carlo Rally in 1973, kicking off the inaugural World Rally Championship with a 1-2-3 for Renault-Alpine. By the end of ’73, Alpine would have nearly twice as many championship points as second-placed Fiat, and it took the full might of the Stratos HF to unseat the king.

That’ll have to be the two decades or so, when Alpine wasn’t really a thing. From 1995 to just a few years back, Alpine was so out of the limelight that a decent chunk of us forgot they were in the theatre at all.

Speaking at least from a modern viewpoint, most car people (or those with access to a copy of Dirt 3) know about the original A110, the modern A110... and not a whole heap besides. If you’re from our wet and windy part of the world, you might know of a couple from the Eighties and early Nineties – A310, A610 and so on – but chances are that’s about it for 99 per cent of you.  

Now, neither the A310 nor A610 sold particularly well, which is just the way of things sometimes – what’s unique and idiosyncratic rarely pays off as well as the same-same and straightforward. Call it the Marvel effect.

Different bosses have different ideas about how to do things, of course, and what makes sense to us as rank outsiders might not make sense when it’s your job to steer the ship. So for Renault to set Alpine on ice for two decades, only to bring it back, give it enough rope to build a second seminal sports car (that also just happens to be called the A110) and give it the keys to the Renaultsport kingdom? Might not have been the way we’d have done it, but you can’t really argue with how it’s panned out for both us and Alpine. Let's just hope they can stick the next landing in the all-electric era. 

Well, much as Chris Harris would suggest the time a pre-production A110 spontaneously combusted while he was driving, we should probably take a wider view.

And our view is... well, appropriately wider. For us, the biggest surprise is that we’re able to talk about Alpine in the present tense.

Just to be clear, we’re not saying Alpine was ever bad, unworthy of success or a force that only had any real impetus in a certain time and place. We’re saying that when it comes to any human creation of real merit and niche appeal, there’s the very real danger that success will be an inconstant and mercurial companion.

Think about it – how many times has Lotus been on the brink? Or Aston? How did the literally world-conquering Lancia plunge into obscurity, seemingly immediately after creating a rally-dominating, world-captivating masterpiece?

As a species, we haven’t exactly been flush with victories over the past decade, but for Alpine to resurface, swing for the fences and, crucially, hit them on the first try? Yeah, we’ll take the win.

Lancia is back too, but we’re unlikely to be that lucky twice.

For the last few years, Alpine has been teasing us with the glorious Alpenglow concept. First unveiled in October 2022 as a hydrogen-powered, single-seat racecar concept, it was originally supposed to get a mid-mounted V8 developed by Derbyshire engine builders Gibson Technology. Woof.

As is often the case with concept cars, that never happened. And yet, by early 2024 it had morphed into the stunning (and much more real) Alpenglow Hy4, with a 2.0-litre four-pot powered by hydrogen and making a proper noise as it lapped Le Mans with Alpine ambassador Zinedine Zidane on board.

However, even then Alpine was promising to replace that 340bhp four-cylinder with a V6, and so in October 2024 we were introduced to the Alpenglow Hy6. The engine was now a 3.5-litre twin-turbo unit running on hydrogen and producing a hefty 740bhp. Oh, and Alpine boss Philippe Krief told TG that as well as considering it as a future Le Mans competitor, it could also become a road-going hydrogen-powered hypercar. Yes please. 

So, Alpine now runs all the motorsporty things that used to come under Renaultsport’s purview. Which, in a weird way, means that Alpine now runs itself. We’ll explain.

If we have our facts straight at all, Renaultsport came about in the Seventies as a merger of the Gordini and Alpine motorsport departments. And, as two independent concerns, both working as Renault’s go-faster divisions... you can kind of see where there’d be friction. Apparently, engines were Gordini’s job and the rest was up to Alpine, which did play to each outfit’s strengths, but the toe-stepping was sustained and severe enough for Renault to create a whole new division, with all employees (at least ostensibly) pulling in the same direction.

Now, with Alpine taking over Renaultsport, it’s now in charge of itself... and, as you may have gleaned, Gordini. Which again, really does make sense – Gordini was all about engines and tuning, and Alpine was a practised hand at building astonishing cars, regardless of how uninspiring the powerplant might be. So, which one would you want at the helm for the electric revolution?