CarBrandLogos archive · Alpine · 2017

AlpineA110

A revival that copied the philosophy rather than just the styling cues.

Photo: Alexander Migl · CC BY-SA 4.0

The story

A defining chapter in Alpine history.

Explore the ideas, engineering and context that shaped the Alpine A110, then continue into its specifications and place in the marque's lineage.

Origins

Reviving a name from 1963 usually produces a heavy car with retro details. Alpine's 2017 A110 avoided that by taking the original's actual principle - weight before everything - and building a modern car around it.

Alpine A110 Cup · Guillaume Vachey from Chalon sur Saone, France · CC0

2018 Alpine A110 Premiere Edition 1.8 Front

Design and engineering

The structure is bonded and riveted aluminium, and almost every component was chosen to save mass: no adaptive dampers, no rear anti-roll bar, one-piece composite seats weighing a fraction of a conventional item. The engine is a 1.8-litre turbocharged four from Renault's range, mounted behind the cabin and driving the rear wheels through a seven-speed dual-clutch gearbox. It is powerful enough only because the car it has to move is so light - comfortably below a Porsche Cayman, and below almost everything else in the class.

2018 Alpine A110 Premiere Edition 1.8 Front · Vauxford · CC BY-SA 4.0

In production

What that buys is a particular kind of ride. Alpine used soft springs and long travel, so the A110 breathes with a road surface instead of fighting it, and it changes direction with the immediacy that comes from having little inertia to overcome. Reviewers were close to unanimous that it was the more enjoyable car on a real road, if not the faster one round a circuit.

2019 Alpine A110 S 1.8 · Vauxford · CC BY-SA 4.0

Legacy

Deyan Denkov's exterior quotes the Berlinette carefully rather than literally, with the four-lamp nose and the pinched cabin, and Laurent Negroni's interior is similarly disciplined. It is built at Dieppe, in the same town as the original, and ran from 2017 to 2026 through a series of trim and power revisions before the electric A390 took Alpine in a different direction.

Chapter 5

It never sold in volume and was never meant to. Its importance is as an argument, successfully made, that lightness is still available to any manufacturer that decides to prioritise it.

At a glance