Our Cars: Alpine A290 GTS

As I write, the A290 GTS that has lived outside my house for the past six months is days away from returning to Alpine. I’ll pen a full final report next time around discussing the ownership experience, the car’s strengths and weaknesses, and where it makes a strong case for itself over and above its excellent in-house rival, the Renault 5 E-Tech – and, crucially, where it does not.

I was able to squeeze in the car’s first service before it goes back to Alpine, which I was keen to do for one very specific reason. These long-term test cars belong to manufacturer press fleets, so we take delivery straight from the manufacturer, not via a main dealer. Consequently, if a long-termer isn’t due a service in the time it’s in our care, we don’t interact with a dealership at all, and so we can’t express any sort of opinion on what for any actual buyer is a very meaningful part of the equation.

In the case of Alpine, it’s all the more meaningful. Nowadays there are 20 official Alpine dealer franchises – called Alpine Stores – dotted around the country, but not too long ago that number was zero. When I bought my A110 back in 2019, I had to travel by train from home in Bristol to collect it from Manchester (I could have chosen Birmingham, but I’d been advised to pick the dealership further north because the chap who ran the place back then was very highly regarded in the community).