What's In The Box? A More Focused Alpine A110, Probably
The Alpine A110 is about to get a little more hardcore. At least, we think - the Renault-owned sports car brand division has posted a teaser on its social media channels, featuring a big crate with the caption: “Coming soon. Stay tuned,” followed by the hashtag: #FromDieppeToLeMans.
Recently, an A110 sporting a sizeable rear wing and a more squat stance was spotted testing at the Nurburgring with ‘A110 GT4’ lettering on its roof. It certainly didn’t look as extreme as the proper A110 GT4, leading us to believe the racer is about to spawn a track-focused, road-going A110.
Is this what’s hiding in Alpine’s crate? We’re putting two and two together here, but it seems likely.
Along with the rear wing spotted on the test car and a lower, stiffer suspension setup, Alpine will likely choose to raise the output of the 1.8-litre inline-four engine. The turbocharged unit - which is shared with the Renault Megane RS - is good for 266bhp in the A110 Cup racing car and around 300 in the GT4, so it clearly has potential.
Judging by the hashtag, we should see the car for the first time at the 2019 24 Hours of Le Mans next weekend. It’s an important event for Alpine: the brand runs LMP2 cars in the race and used the event as a reveal location for its Celebration concept a few years ago.
Growing up on a diet of World Rally Championship highlights and lengthy Gran Turismo 2 sessions, a life in cars was as good as inevitable for Matt.
Comments
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uwu
Amazing, still wish we got it here in the US, the market for these type of cars are a bit lackluster
It’s not sold there because no one will buy it. Car manufacturers aren’t stupid, they aren’t talking out of their ass when deciding that a certain model won’t be sold in some markets. It’s not like they didn’t observe the market and ask potential buyers before coming to the decision not to sell it there. Enthusiasts aside, Americans like big comfortable cars with large powerful engine (the engine has to be large, they’d rather buy a 270hp V6 than a turbo I4 of the same power) and lots of chrome. They don’t care about fuel economy or interior quality, if it were otherwise, the Ford F-150 and Honda CR-V wouldn’t sell nearly as well as they do. The Alpine is nothing of these, so only a select handful of enthusiasts might be interested in it, and from that small group only very few have the money and decide to spend it on a car that doesn’t have a dealer network at all.
How much bhp is it packin