Winter is coming

I’ve had a few days at work where I could not believe that ‘they’ were paying me for it. One of those was several winters ago, when I went up to the Far Frozen Nawth to ‘sign off’ the ABS and traction control tune for the Alpine A110.

Now, a confession is in order here: I needed to go drive an A110 on a frozen lake to personally check the chassis control software about as much as I needed to ask Eric Clapton if the tension on the third string of his guitar is quite right. An engineering boss wouldn’t normally admit that, but I haven’t been an Alpine employee for years, probably long enough for the professional statute of limitations to have kicked in. At least I hope so.

The A110 chassis electrickery had been developed by the best in the business – both at the supplier, and more importantly, by the dynamics team at Alpine – the very same group that was responsible for all those hot RS Méganes and Clios that are already starting to fade into a nostalgic past. In particular, our chief chassis guru – Thierry Annequin – was a bona fide genius who knew more about chassis setup and validating cars on low-µ surfaces than most mortals.