How to lose weight: Part one

The Alpine A110 is quite light. Now, I know those opening words will cause some of you to roll your eyes and click away to read something more exciting from Henry. But I’d ask those of you who are thoroughly sick of us talking – and usually enthusing – about the bloody Alpine to bear with us for a moment.

For the Ti powers-that-be have asked me (and I quote) to ‘fully geek out’ on how the A110 achieved its featherweight – by modern standards – 1098kg weight. And that’s not some cleverly manipulated ‘dry’ weight with no fuel, oil or water on board, nor with every lightweight option included and the mass of air-con and nav systems conveniently excluded as ‘no cost options’. In the Alpine’s case those are no-cheating, honest-to-God kilos; all fluids on board, at the kerb, ready to go.

Hopefully some of the insight into how this was achieved will be of general interest even to those who are not really interested in off-beat little French sports cars, especially ones that may never be seen in your home market, if you live outside Europe. More of which later…