The A110 Première Edition sports coupé

The all-new A110 Première Edition is the lightweight, elegant sports coupé that signals the return of Alpine. True to Alpine’s DNA, the A110 Première Edition places absolute agility and driving pleasure front and centre, without compromising on everyday comfort.

Designed and manufactured in France, the mid-engined, two-seater coupé features aluminium construction to keep weight to a minimum and sophisticated double-wishbone suspension. The A110 Première Edition is powered by a turbocharged, 1.8-litre, four-cylinder petrol engine, which develops 252PS. Like all Alpines, it’s rear-wheel drive.

Limited to 1,955 examples – a nod to the year Alpine was founded – the A110 Première Edition was fully reserved within five days of going on sale. The production series A110 will follow shortly. The first new model for two decades, the A110 Première Edition marks the relaunch of Alpine. Conceived as a standalone business unit within Groupe Renault, Alpine has an ambitious long-term strategy that invokes the vision and determination of its founder, Jean Rédélé.

As well as a rich heritage in building agile, lightweight sports cars that are in their element on winding mountain roads, Alpine is also well-known for competing at the highest level of international motorsport. Its crowning glories include winning the 1973 World Rally Championship title and outright victory at the 1978 24 Hours of Le Mans.

It is in that same spirit that Alpine today competes in international endurance racing. Its title-winning FIA LMP2 World Endurance Championship programme showcases the brand’s ambition and commitment to motorsport. New for 2018, the recently announced one-make Alpine Europa Cup for race-prepared A110 Cups, which will be run by Alpine’s racing partner Signatech, demonstrates the coupé’s performance as well as Alpine’s commitment to customer racing.

Michael van der Sande, Managing Director, Alpine, comments: “It is an enormous privilege to relaunch a brand that instils such passion – but a big responsibility too. This passion for Alpine, both within Groupe Renault and among sports car enthusiasts, is huge. It has long been our ambition to bring Alpine back. Now, the time is right.

With the new A110 Première Edition we’ve taken the core principles that made Alpine so successful in the Sixties and Seventies – such as compact size, light weight and a very low centre of gravity – and deployed them with modern technologies. The car is an absolute pleasure to drive on country roads or on the track, but also very comfortable to drive every day.

It is my mission to establish Alpine as a permanent fixture in the sports car segment.”

Relaunching Alpine

• Alpine Vision show car presented in 2016
• A110 Première Edition unveiled one year later
• Alpine established as a standalone business unit within Groupe Renault
• Original Alpine factory in Dieppe extended and upgraded for A110 production

The Alpine project was announced in 2012 and four years later, in 2016, the Alpine Vision show car was unveiled in Monaco. A year later, the road-going A110 Première Edition made its public debut at the Geneva Motor Show. Conceived as a responsive, fast-moving standalone brand under the Groupe Renault umbrella, Alpine has its own dedicated design and engineering teams.

Carving its own clear niche in the sports car segment, the A110 Première Edition goes on sale in 11 markets in Europe, as well as Japan and Australia, with further markets still to be announced. It will be sold through dedicated dealerships – some 57 in Europe alone – by knowledgeable and highly trained advisors.

The initial batch of 1,955 A110 Première Editions was allocated via a mobile app, which allowed buyers to place a refundable deposit and reserve a car. Every one of those A110 Première Editions was reserved within five days, illustrating the level of excitement there is for Alpine’s return among sports car enthusiasts. Order books for the production series model will open soon, although the app can be used to secure a position on the waiting list immediately. A110 Première Edition deliveries will commence in continental Europe in March 2018 and in right-hand drive markets in the second quarter of 2018.

The A110 will be manufactured at Alpine’s factory in Dieppe, northern France. Originally built by Alpine-founder Jean Rédélé in 1969, the Dieppe site has continued to produce low-volume, high performance Renault Sport cars in recent years. Now, Alpine production will return to Dieppe and, as part of the relaunch, the factory has been heavily upgraded and modernised.

Bernard Ollivier, Deputy Managing Director, Alpine, comments: “In 2012, at the beginning of the project, I was appointed to create a new Alpine sports car from a blank sheet of paper. It had to be true to the DNA of Alpine – agility through light weight, very elegant and a pleasure to drive.

We gave our designers complete freedom to imagine what a modern day Alpine should look like. They had very few technical constraints. It is unusual to approach it this way, but that is the reason for the very strong design we have today.

Starting from a blank sheet of paper we could also create our own platform. One of the big objectives for the A110 was ‘feel at one’ – the driver should feel at one with the machine. That means the centre of gravity and the roll centre have to be very low in the car, which you can only do with a dedicated platform.

I set a weight target for the car of 1,100kg, which is very difficult to achieve. That is why we decided to use aluminium for the chassis and body. The final result, just 1,080kg (1,103kg for the Première Edition), means we achieved our objective of making the A110 one of the lightest cars in its class.”

Michael van der Sande adds: “Since we announced the relaunch of Alpine, the response has amazed us all. Even though Alpine went away for 20 years there is still so much passion and enthusiasm for it, not only in France, but all over the world, too.

The first thing we did when we announced the return of Alpine was develop a design language that would do justice to the original models, while also demonstrating our ambition and modernity. We then developed a technical concept – one of lightweight construction and absolute driving pleasure – that would make the new car stand out in the sports car segment. From the beginning we said the new car had to be true to Alpine’s DNA. Only once we had achieved that did we build the business model to go with it.

We decided Alpine should be a dedicated business unit with its own designers and engineers. We wanted these very passionate and skilled individuals to be completely dedicated to Alpine, to work closely together in agile, responsive teams. We’ve also developed a dedicated network of dealerships with highly-trained advisors. We felt only this approach would enable us to be sharp enough in front of a very demanding set of customers.

I am so pleased Alpine production is returning to the factory in Dieppe, in the very same production plant that was used to build Alpines all those years ago. The whole setup and culture there is still geared around low-volume, high-quality, sporty cars. Employee motivation is very high at Dieppe and the team there is very proud to wear the Alpine logo. It’s a fantastic group of people.

We have put a lot of thought and investment into the factory – which is set up for production numbers in single digit thousands each year – to bring it up to the level we need in terms of fit and finish, consistency and quality control.”

Technical Details

• Lightweight aluminium construction
• Double-wishbone suspension
• Mid-mounted 252PS turbocharged engine
• Absolute agility and driving pleasure combined with everyday comfort

The A110 will sprint to 62mph in 4.5 seconds. Its top speed is electronically limited at 156mph. The lightweight construction ensures excellent fuel efficiency (46.3mpg NEDC Combined) and low CO₂ emissions (138g/km), too.

Alpine in Motorsport

• Founder Jean Rédélé competed in rallies and road races
• Alpine’s highlights include World Rally Championship and Le Mans victories
• Alpine competed across the board in single-seaters, rallying and endurance racing
• In 2016, Alpine won Le Mans and the LMP2 FIA World Endurance Championship

Proving the performance, agility and durability of his cars in the crucible of motorsport was of utmost importance to Jean Rédélé. Alpine has competed at the highest level of rallying and circuit racing for decades, recording a string of famous victories that belies the company’s modest size. With that same ambitious and determined spirit Alpine today competes in the FIA World Endurance Championship. The one-make Alpine Europa Cup, meanwhile, demonstrates the A110’s inherent agility and performance on the race track.

Although Alpine is perhaps best known for its rallying exploits in the Sixties and Seventies, and for winning the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1978, the company has, in fact, competed right across the motorsport spectrum. Alpine has built no fewer than 70 single-seater racing cars, including two Formula 1 machines, and some 37 sports prototypes for endurance racing.

The company also counts several rallycross championships to its credit, while amateur competitors have recorded in excess of 1,000 individual victories in hill climbs, club racing events and autotests. Demonstrably, motorsport is a core component of Alpine’s DNA.

In fact, it’s true to say the company was as much a builder of competition cars as road-going sports cars when it was founded by Rédélé in 1955. The Frenchman had already earned himself a reputation as a formidable driver, thanks to a series of class victories in high-profile events such as the Critérium des Alpes rally. Campaigning modified Renault 4 CVs, Rédélé quickly proved his ability to prepare cars for motorsport, too.

By the early Sixties Alpine cars were competing throughout Europe in rallies and road races, as well as on purpose-built race circuits. In 1963 the aerodynamic, long-tail M63 prototype – the company’s first dedicated circuit racer – won the French sports car championship. The following year the improved M64 prototype managed the same feat, as well as clinching a class victory at Le Mans.

Driving Alpine’s first Formula 3 car, Frenchman Henri Grandsire won the French F3 championship in the same year. A string of national rally championship victories would follow soon after, the A110 victorious in Spain, France, Bulgaria and Romania, among others. In 1971, three A110s locked out the podium at the world-famous Rallye Monte Carlo, a feat Alpine repeated two years later. That dominant performance on the twisty, snow-covered mountain roads of the Monte would prove to be a portentous moment; Alpine went on to win the World Rally Championship Manufacturers’ title later that year.

It was in 1978 that Alpine recorded one of its most celebrated motorsport successes. Driving the A442B sports prototype, Didier Pironi and Jean-Pierre Jaussaud won the 24 Hours of Le Mans, lapping the 8-mile Circuit de la Sarthe 369 times. By the mid-Nineties, Alpine had racked up 26 domestic and international rally titles, four rallycross championships and six single-seater titles.

Using those decades of success as a springboard, Alpine returned to front-line motorsport in 2013 in a collaboration with French race stable Signatech. It immediately proved to be a triumphant return to racing; the marque’s A450 prototype won the European Le Mans Series title at its first attempt, and again in 2014.

From there, Signatech-Alpine graduated to the FIA World Endurance Championship, competing once again on the world stage. The A450B secured a race victory in the LMP2 category at the 6 Hours of Shanghai in that first year. In 2016, that car’s replacement, the A460, won four of the nine rounds to secure the LMP2 WEC title for Alpine, the most hard-fought of those victories coming at the 24 Hours of Le Mans. Alpine continued to race in the FIA World Endurance Championship in 2017, winning its class at the 6 Hours of the Circuit of the Americas.

A racing version of the A110, the A110 Cup, has been developed by Signatech in close partnership with Alpine’s own engineers. With power lifted to 270PS and weight lowered to just 1050kg, the competition car is the ultimate expression of the A110’s remarkable agility and thrilling on-track performance.

Additionally, Alpine has announced a one-make series for the A110 Cup. From 2018 the six-round series will take in some of the most iconic circuits in Europe, including Silverstone in the UK and Spa-Francorchamps in Belgium. Operated by Alpine’s FIA World Endurance Championship partner, Signatech, the Alpine Europa Cup further demonstrates Alpine’s commitment to motorsport.

Bernard Ollivier, Deputy Managing Director, Alpine, comments: “Alpine is one of those rare automotive brands that comes from motorsport. Jean Rédélé created Alpine because of the success he had in motorsport. When we relaunched Alpine, we decided very early on that we would engage the brand once again in racing.

It was a very important decision because motorsport is in Alpine’s DNA. The marque has achieved so much in racing over the years and I’m very pleased we have been able to continue that story by winning the European Le Mans Series and the LMP2 FIA World Endurance Championship.

We also decided it was important for us to demonstrate that Alpine’s motorsport DNA is present in the A110 production car. That’s why we have announced the Alpine Europa Cup. With very little modification the A110 becomes a thrilling racing car, highlighting its inherent performance and agility. The series will also allow amateur racers to become an important part of Alpine’s motorsport story.”