What makes the Alpine A110 a proper Porsche rival?
A French Rally icon that perfected the formula for going fast. A simple formula that proved to be so effective that it laid the foundation for some of the purest vehicles to have blessed the world of motorsports. The Alpine A110 was Renault’s answer to the Cosworth tuned Ford Escorts and Lancia Fulvias and it sure managed to destroy the Fords and all of its competition at the treacherous stages of the Monte Carlo Rally in 1973.
For those of you who aren’t familiar with Alpine, it is a small french sports car manufacturer established back in 1955. The company was founded by a gentleman who used to go by the name of Jean Rédélé. The man owned a garage and his passion for racing encouraged him to tackle the motorsport calendar. His souped-up Renault 4CV was quite a missile for the era gaining the french automaker’s attention and his relationship with Renault would prove to be a boon as the French auto marque purchased the Alpine brand in 1973.
The Vehicles that followed this partnership included the legendary A110 rally car which was based on the Renault 8 and shared the same underpinnings and the rear-engined, RWD layout with a coupe body designed to keep the overall weight at bay.
Ove Andersson first piloted the original A110 to victory at the famous 1971 Rallye Monte-Carlo.
The original A110 produced a mere 51 – horsepower using its tiny 956-cc engine and throughout its life, the A110 witnessed a bump in performance and displacement as the final versions of the car powered by the 1.8-liter inline-four produced about 180 horsepower which was quite impressive for the era.
But the Alpine A110 was never about the horsepower, it pursued its need for speed from the other end of the spectrum, i.e weight saving and that’s what made it so successful. The short wheelbase, featherweight construction of the A110 made it more agile than most of its competitors, which helped it make up for its power deficit in the corners. This single-minded approach to weight saving led the A110 to victory in the iconic rally stages of Monte Carlo in the early 1970s.
The Alpine brand, however, was not as lucky as the A110 and by the turn of the century, Renault pulled the plug on Alpine with its last production car the A610 rolling out its final units off of the dealership floors in 1995.
Maybe it was the era or the idea of French sports cars that didn’t quite catch on back in the day but sadly the little french sports car maker was never able to compete with the European giants when it came to sales success.
The reason why this little Renault-powered Alpine was so effective despite the horsepower deficit was down to its weight. The original A110 was featherweight, weighing in at a mere 620 kilograms combined with the R-8’s short wheelbase, the car was capable of cornering at ballistic speeds and gliding over bumps without breaking a sweat. This combination proved to be a winner in the Monte Carlo rally which was riddled with steep, unforgiving corners and punishing gravel roads.
The 21st-century iteration of this icon has been built with the same guiding philosophy at its core. It aims to go against the top dogs of the sports car world that includes the likes of Porsche’s legendary Cayman and Audi’s precise weapon of a car the TT-RS. Though all these cars are quite closely matched in terms of price and overall characteristics by that I mean, all three are 2 seater sports cars aimed at carving canyon roads and setting ballistic lap times. But the approach that all these vehicles take to achieve their final objective couldn’t be more different from one another. The Cayman stays true to the Porsche heritage, sporting a choice of mid-engined flat-6 or flat-4, and in addition, is aided by tonnes of electronic wizardry that makes it a razor-sharp instrument even in the hands of a novice driver.
The Alpine takes a very nostalgic approach and reshapes the term sports car for the modern era. It traces its predecessor’s footsteps or in this case tire tracks that are focused on keeping the weight to a bare minimum, as a result, the 2017 A110 only weighs 1103 kgs with a full tank of fuel. This is achieved by rethinking the A110 from the ground up and getting rid of every gram that isn’t necessary for the car and engineers behind this new-gen Alpine have managed to strike the balance just right.
The seats, for instance, which are specially made for the Alpine, weigh in at a featherlight 13kgs per corner which is less than half of what other conventional buckets weigh, and all of this is achieved without compromising driver or passenger comfort in the process. The parking brake has been integrated into the main Brembo calipers which save 7 odd kilos, even the infotainment setup is of a bespoke lightweight design and not something borrowed from the Renault parts bin which goes on to show the brands commitment to this single-minded approach.
The experience of driving an Alpine is just surreal and once you hop in and get going, one can’t help but notice that the drive is far more involving than its rivals from this segment and that’s only possible because of the simplicity of the A110 as it encourages you to ring its neck, change gears at the right time, hit the apex and feel the tarmac underneath all while staying within the legal speed limit, at least most of the time. And this wouldn’t have been possible if the Alpine had a great big V8 with 500hp on tap or a complicated AWD system like the Audi. Alpine has realized the importance of balance which is an increasingly rare trait in the modern automotive landscape.
Team FJ’s Alpine A110 Rally R-GT is en route to trace its predecessor’s rally legacy.
The transmission too is a carefully matched 7-speed Getrag DCT gearbox and even though it feels quite counter-intuitive in a car that is chasing the lowest possible end of the, using a DCT with a lower displacement engine was probably a better way to extract optimal performance out of a platform like this one as opposed to a bigger capacity engine and a lighter, more conventional gearbox. It is this attention to detail more than anything that makes this little Alpine such a joy to drive however I feel a manual would have made this a modern-day icon, but it looks like Alpine had pretty good reasons for not providing a manual option.
I am not personally against technological advancements in the Automotive Industry, but both the Porsche and the Audi are missing the drama, fluidity and intentional flaws that the Alpine brings to the game the only thing that people could want from the A110 apart from a good ol’ manual gearbox was a bit more power and Alpine did respond to this by coming out with the A110S.