A110 (Berlinette and current)

Alpine A110

Jean Rédélé was a Dieppe Renault dealer with a taste for rallying when, in 1955, he founded Société des Automobiles Alpine, naming the new marque after his own successes on Alpine rally roads at the wheel of lightened, tuned Renault 4CVs. That formula was to take a humble Renault mechanical base, wrap it in something far lighter and more aerodynamic, and go rallying. It became Alpine's identity for the next two decades.

The car that made the formula famous was the A110. Unveiled as a prototype at the Paris Salon in October 1962 and into regular production in 1963, the A110 "Berlinette" paired a rear-mounted, Renault-derived four-cylinder engine with a fibreglass body over a lightweight steel backbone chassis. Its rearward weight bias, once a handicap to tame, became a rallying weapon in the hands of Alpine's works drivers: on loose, twisting stages the A110 could out-point far more powerful opposition. Across its production life the engine grew steadily, from a 956cc unit good for roughly 51 horsepower at launch through 1100, 1300 and 1500cc versions to an aluminium 1600cc engine and, in the ultimate works competition cars, an 1800cc unit reported at around 180-185 horsepower.

That evolution paid off in 1973, the first year of the FIA World Rally Championship for Manufacturers. Alpine-Renault swept to the inaugural title with six wins from thirteen rounds, its drivers (Jean-Claude Andruet at Monte Carlo, Bernard Darniche in Morocco, Jean-Luc Thérier at the Acropolis and San Remo, and Jean-Pierre Nicolas on the Tour de Corse) carrying the A110 to a championship that has never left Alpine's identity since. It was also close to the marque's competition peak: rival manufacturers, notably Lancia and Fiat, would take over at the front of the WRC in the years that followed.

Classic A110 production ran through 1977, giving way to the front-engined A310 as Alpine's road-car flagship. A related four-seat GT4 derivative had also been offered from the early-to-mid 1960s, but it sold in only the low hundreds, with published totals from about 200 to 300 and one figure of 263, and never displaced the two-seat Berlinette as the model most associated with the name. Renault had taken control of Alpine in 1973, and the marque's road cars continued through the A310, the GTA and finally the A610, built until 1995. After the A610's demise, Renault let the Alpine name sit dormant for roughly two decades. No new Alpine-badged road car appeared through the rest of the 1990s and 2000s, despite periodic concept-car flirtations.

The revival came in 2017. Renault unveiled a new, mid-engined Alpine A110 at the Geneva Motor Show that March, built once again at the historic Dieppe plant, now formally named the Manufacture Alpine Jean Rédélé. Rather than chase raw power, the new A110 leaned hard into the original's lightweight philosophy: an aluminium chassis and body, a kerb weight quoted around 1,080 kg, and a 1.8-litre turbocharged four producing roughly 250 horsepower, enough for a sub-5-second 0-62mph time without the mass of most rivals. Launch trims (Première Édition, Pure and Légende) gave way over the following years to a firmer, more powerful S, a stripped-down, track-oriented R, and further variants, each keeping the same core recipe of light weight over big horsepower numbers. Reviewers and owners alike tended to single out the car's steering feel and composure as evidence that Alpine had understood what made the original special, even while it competed against far more powerful (and heavier) rivals like the Porsche Cayman.

The modern A110 went on to become, by a wide margin, the best-selling Alpine road car ever built, with production at Dieppe approaching 30,000 units by the mid-2020s. That is roughly four times the classic Berlinette's total output. In October 2025, Alpine announced that this chapter was ending: combustion-engine A110 production would conclude in mid-2026 after a final run of 1,750 cars, including send-off special editions, clearing the way for a third-generation A110 built on Alpine's new all-electric performance platform. Whatever comes next, the two eras of A110 already on record form one of the more complete full-circle stories in French sports-car history: a rear-engined 1960s and '70s rally champion and a mid-engined 2010s and 2020s revival built on the same lightweight ideas.