The Alpine A110 Is A Lightweight Miracle And A Stunning Piece Of Car Design

When you daydream about French cars, as connoisseurs like us are wont to do, what comes to mind? Teardrop shaped hydro pneumatically suspended spaceships? Chic Parisien bash abouts with asymmetrical wheelbases? Snail shaped peasant cars with umbrella handle gearshifts and twin cylinder engines? It’s a veritable onion bag full of oddball engineering with the slightest sense of the French stubbornly doing things their own damn way. A sports car from France may sound like oxymoron, but the home of the revolution has a long history of doing just that.

Jean Redele was a wealthy Renault dealer in Dieppe who began rallying a souped up 4CV after the war, finding success at the Coupe Des Alpes (giving Alpine its name). Working with local coachbuilder Chappe et Gessalin, and the prodigious Italian designer Giovanni Michelotti, he shoved the 4CV mechanicals into a tiny, pioneering glass fiber coupe to create the very first Alpine, the A106 in 1955. Light weight and rear engine agility was key to these sylph like little cars outstanding performance in French rallies, although initially they were never meant for public consumption. Nevertheless the A106 was eventually turned into a road car with an ever evolving specification, until it was replaced in 1958 with the A108. In 1963 it was replaced with a slightly larger, more aggressive model that would cement the Alpine legend and become the beating heart of the brand – the A110.

Initially with 95bhp from it’s rear mounted 1.3 liter engine, continuous development and bigger engines turned the A110 into a formidable rally weapon. It won the inaugural World Rally Championship in 1973, but it was rendered obsolete overnight by the arrival of the purpose built Lancia Stratos a year later. Then, in an ironic twist of fate for a manufacturer of efficient, lightweight sports cars, the oil crisis tanked sales so Renault ended up buying Alpine outright. With the resources of the state owned mothership now behind them, the A110 was followed by the larger A310, which by the eighties morphed into the V6 turbo powered Renault Alpine GTA, a sort of plastic 911. The last of these rolled out of the famous Dieppe factory in 1995 and that was that for the storied French sports car maker. Until the release of the new A110 in 2017.

It’s Sort Of A French Lotus But Better

If all this talk of lightweight sports cars and doing more with less makes Alpine sound like a sort of French Lotus, when it comes to this new A110 you’re not exactly a million miles off. The original business case for this rebirth was centered on it being a partnership with another small volume sports car manufacturer. Way back in 2013 Alpine jumped under the duvet in a 50/50 join venture with Caterham, which at the time was stuffed with ex-Lotus engineers. Unfortunately for Alpine, Caterham in true Colin Chapman fashion had not been entirely honest about the state of their finances, leaving Alpine to pick up the pieces when the whole arrangement went ass over tit. Still the fundamental engineering for a modern, super lightweight, modestly powered sports car was well underway, so CEO (and ruthless cost cutter) Carlos Ghosn allowed the project to go ahead on the condition it paid for itself and didn’t lose any money.

Making cars lighter has long since moved beyond the stinky, creaky and slightly approximate construction of the fiberglass cars of the sixties. This new A110 has a folded and bonded aluminum frame, which means it doesn’t require the expensive press tools of a traditional stamped and welded one and is much cheaper and less labor intensive to manufacture than carbon fiber. Hanging from each corner is bespoke double wishbone suspension with identically sized (more cost saving) front and rear brakes. Sitting in the middle of the chassis is the 1.8 turbo four from the Megane RS making 252 bhp and 236 lbs. ft. And it is tiny: at 164” (4181mm) long, and 78” (1980 mm) wide, it’s 6” (200 mm) shorter and half an inch (14 mm) narrower than a Cayman. With the curvaceous body also being aluminum, all up this little sports car weighs 2430 lbs. (1103kg), over 500lbs (260 kg) lighter than the Porsche. You could probably bugger up the power to weight ratio by driving it after a hearty lunch.

I try to be a conscientious writer and not knock this stuff out when I’ve been on the sherry all evening, so I watched and read a few reviews to understand what everybody else thought. Then I could write exactly the opposite, to be my usual mercurial self (just kidding). The overriding thing that came across was how well this car rode, which shouldn’t be that surprising because if there is one characteristic French cars are known for, it’s the ability to float across any road surface without knocking the ash from your Gauloises. However my first few days behind the wheel that didn’t prove to be the case at all. I thought it rode like shit, thumping into potholes and joggling over speed bumps.

I found the steering too light and not exactly talkative either. Huh. This was not what I was expecting, so the Alpine and I were not off to a good start. Compounding the annoyance was the almost total lack of storage space inside, the glitchy wireless CarPlay connection unless I took my phone out of my pocket and put it in the slot on the center console and a view from the rearview mirror that was like spying on your hot neighbor through their mail slot. It must be said though apart from that outward visibility is excellent.

Ok Now I Get It

To see what all the fuss was really about, I spent most of last weekend on the bendy roads between villages near my house driving like a complete and utter helmet. In keeping with the Alpine’s lightweight mantra, there are no adaptive dampers. I imagine the French suspension engineers arrogantly decided they know what’s best and you’ll like it. You need to get some load through the suspension and steering to make it come alive, as if the car being lightweight on its own isn’t enough to get it all working properly. Start leaning on it, really leaning on it, and it will talk to you. The steering, inert if accurate around town, is suddenly transmitting every crease in the tarmac and white line up through the rim. Weirdly the ride seems to soften up, but it remains incredibly composed and communicative when pushing, remaining utterly unflustered despite my cack-handed helmsmanship. The body starts moving around – not to warn you but to help you. Sport mode, simply accessed by a button on the steering wheel, sharpens up the throttle and gearbox, backs off the traction control, gives you complete manual control of the changes and makes the exhaust nosier. You can crack down the box on the way in with the engine popping, stand the Alpine on its nose while you turn, and as you clog it on the way out of a corner, the rear squats like a shitting dog and off you go.

And you do go – 252 bhp might not sound like a lot, but the gossamer Alpine takes off like a Rafale M hitting the burners off the deck of the Charles De Gaulle. 0-60 can be achieved in a launch control assisted 4.5 seconds, and top speed is limited to 155 mph (other fruitier versions can crack 170). I’ve driven cars that are probably faster (Civic Type R, M240i) but I didn’t drive them as fast as I drove the Alpine, because it was so capable and confidence-inspiring, helped by its diminutive size which is spot on. Honestly, I kept going quicker, braking later (and then sometimes not braking at all) until I became acutely aware I was one errant tractor away from sitting in a pile of smoldering blue wreckage in the middle of a field.

Throughout all this tomfoolery you’re held in place by excellent standard Sabelt seats. Unlike the earlier versions of the A110, they’re no longer fixed buckets, being tweakable for height and backrest angle. It’s plenty roomy, easy to access, and ergonomically where this car shines is its simplicity and clarity of purpose. There is nothing you don’t need. Standard equipment runs to single zone climate (with knobs), electric windows and mirrors, cruise control, CarPlay and Android Auto, and that’s about your lot. Most of what you can touch is nicely finished, but the dashboard upper and lower, along with the main door panels won’t be worrying Lexus anytime soon. There are some lovely touches of French pride though – small Tricolores on the insides of the doors and outside on the C pillar, the (optional) reversing camera superimposes red, white, and blue guidelines on the screen, and the gear selection buttons also illuminate in the colors of the French flag depending on what mode you are in.

About that gearbox. It’s a seven-speed DCT, and no doubt some of you will be howling a car like this should be a manual. In his book ‘Inside the Machine’, the project director and chief engineer of this car David Twohig says this:

Another contentious choice, and one that many of the more hardcore motoring journalists would later bemoan – the lack of a manual gearbox seen by some as a compromise for a focused ‘driver’s car. It was a choice that I would patiently defend later in a hundred discussions with journalists and enthusiasts – explaining that a modern double-clutch gearbox is actually lighter than a manual equivalent, when looked at as an entire system of gearbox, clutch, controls, and even the mounting brackets for the clutch pedal and gearlever. Equally importantly, the double-clutch gearbox with paddle-shift gear controls behind the steering wheel was well adapted to ‘less expert’ drivers. This was always a difficult point to explain – most drivers certainly most enthusiast drivers, and even some professional automotive journalists, tend to overestimate their capabilities behind the wheel. I, or the other hand, had been lucky enough to sit beside enough professional test drivers by now to understand that most normal people (like me) have very limited skills…

This is very much an engineer’s point of view – in measurable, empirical metrics a DCT is objectively better. But as designer, I also think in terms of things that cannot easily be quantified: feel, emotional engagement, and a smug sense of superiority. But to be honest, the fact this car isn’t a manual didn’t bother me personally one bit. In fact it was a boon commuting into Coventry every day. In Auto mode, the changes are nice and slurry, and modern engines have such a good spread of power you’re never left floundering when booting it. We’re not talking about an old GM400 three-speed treaclematic for God’s sake.

Understanding Why It’s Such A Good Design

One of the reasons I wanted to borrow the Alpine was not because I wanted to ponce about showing off for a week (there used to be at least two A110s living in my town, so I’m a day late and a dollar short as usual) but because I wanted to talk about its design, which I consider to be an exceptional piece of work. Something that comes up regularly is that we shouldn’t judge older cars by the standards of today, and design is subjective. The A110 gives me the perfect opportunity to demonstrate in one way why that is not the case: that we can objectively understand whether a car has correct proportions or not.

What do I mean by proportions? Volumes is a fancy designer way of talking about the silhouette of a car. It means the various parts like the hood, trunk and passenger compartment. The proportions are how these things interact with each other. If you’ve ever watched a designer starting sketch on YouTube, they nearly always start with the wheels. Why do this? Because using the wheels as a guide allows you to ballpark the overall proportions of a car. Here take a look:

You can see, despite the 54-year gap between them, the overall proportions of the old and new A110s are essentially identical. The overhangs are a bit tighter on the new model, and obviously the pillars have to be thicker for crash regulations, but it’s remarkable how well the new car captures the essence of the old one without descending into pastiche. The surfacing is clean and simple, and the detailing is bang up to date – I particularly like how well the auxiliary lighting is integrated into what we designers call the down-the-road graphics (DRG), the car’s signature front-end appearance that makes it recognizable and identifiable to observers of the car. One of the main design objectives was for the A110 to generate its rear downforce without need of a bolt-on spoiler, and enormous effort was spent on surfacing the complex rear fenders to include the merest hint of a lip while making sure they could be stamped without tearing the aluminum – a feat that Twohig says wouldn’t have been possible were Alpine not a small skunkworks team operating outside the conservative design and engineering departments of Renault proper.

And this car could never have existed had it been conceived and created within Renault itself. Large OEMs are too unwieldy and too dogmatic in their processes to push through such a single-minded car past all the design gateways and engineering hurdles it would encounter.

It’s A Pint Sized Supercar Without The Supercar Compromises

For all the admirable dietary rigor, don’t be thinking this is a compromised machine. It’s not a stripped-out bathtub like a Lotus, or a high-maintenance carbon fiber coffin like an Alfa Romeo 4C. The Alpine is a much more rounded, everyday experience than that. It occurred to me that at the start of my week with the A110 I had it all wrong. Sure, the urban ride is a bit stiff but in nearly all other respects this is a car you can happily daily – I know because I did. I even took it to get groceries, although because neither the front nor rear trunk are especially capacious one of my shopping bags had to travel in the passenger footwell. But then, when you’re in the mood it becomes a pint-sized supercar. It’s roomy, refined, comfortable, supremely easy to use and see out of, and because of that low curb weight incredibly economical. Over a week and 300 or so miles of urban trundling, fast dual carriageways, and a couple of afternoons driving like Esteban Ocon with the raging hump, I got 40 mpg (34 imp mpg). Forty. Due to the A110’s compact size the fuel tank, mounted behind the front axle is on the small side at 9 (US) gallons (45 liters) but still, bloody hell. For a car of this performance that gas mileage is insane.

There’s even more good news. As tested the car Alpine lent me lists for $76,678 (£59,515) including $1082 (£840) for the dark metallic Abyss Blue. The hero color Alpine blue is $2357 (£1830) which feels a bit cheeky, as does $605 (£470) for the triangular-shaped storage pack that sits on the bulkhead between the seats, as this is the only way you’re getting anywhere to put anything in the cabin. There are a few other upgrades available including an active exhaust, and an upgraded Focal stereo, but mostly it’s cosmetic stuff you really don’t need. Bog standard in washing machine white (the only standard color) the A110 will require a check for $70,515 (£54,490) a price that includes taxes and delivery. Considering it’s possible to spec a Cayman/Boxster up to nearly six figures, that’s a complete bargain. And you won’t have to put up with seeing these everywhere like a bloody Porsche either. It truly is the connoisseur’s choice.

Alpine have promised that future models may be coming to the US. Let’s hope that turns out to be the case. Otherwise, it’s a shame you have to wait another 18 years to import one.

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