Alpine A110 R Ultime review

Because despite its crazy price and paucity of horsepower and gears compared to whatever you might regard as the competition, the Ultime is a brilliantly lovely car to drive, one designed for the track for sure – hence its 7min 18sec Nürburgring time – but which is also perfectly civilised to use on road.

As such it has an unusually wide repertoire for such a car. And although it does indeed have more of everything relative to any other A110 – including the R upon which it’s based – it is still the epitome of the less is more philosophy of car creation.

True, it has hundreds of horsepower less than any other mid-engined, track-focused car at this price – yet that does not affect how engaging it is behind the wheel. Or how much fun you can have on big circuits like Spa and Silverstone as well as tighter, more challenging ones like the Bugatti Circuit at Le Mans, where Alpine has a new base and let me try the Ultime for a day.

Here it is an absolute gem of a car to drive hard without scaring yourself to death. Indeed a key part of its appeal is the knowledge it doesn’t have huge mountains of power and torque. Its appeal is far more subtle than merely unleashing monstrous gobs of acceleration down every straight – because it can’t. But through the corners and under brakes – and in the way it allows you to feel what all four of its bespoke compound Michelin Cup 2 tyres are doing so intimately over every millimetre of track they rotate and sometimes even bounce over – it is sensational.

Its steering is three-star Michelin rosette delicious in the way it provides such textured information about what’s happening beneath your backside. You can choose to hurl or stroke the Ultime around a circuit and it will let you get away with extraordinary liberties in either case. But however you drive it, you will come away oscillating with pleasure, and I guarantee you won’t realise how fast you’ve just been, at least until people come up to you afterwards and demand to know how much power it has.

When you say it’s a mere 321bhp they will say, no way, it must have been mapped to at least 450bhp.

Porsche 911 GT3 drivers will find its lap speed hard to fathom. Ferrari 296 GTB owners will be disturbed by its ability to drive away the moment corners and braking zones are involved. Even GT3 RS pedallers will need to know their cars – and tracks – very well indeed not to be embarrassed by a well-driven Ultime. That’s how quick it is. And not one of them will experience the same level of intimacy or feedback that’s so readily available.

As a combination it is some package. One that’s worth a quarter of a million pounds? Well that depends on your own notions of value.

On the surface the Ultime does appear to lack technical sophistication – and raw pace – compared with most other rivals at this price. Its engine is still the same old 1.8-litre, four-cylinder turbo that can be found in many other Renaults, even if it’s been modified internally by Oreca. That’s enough to fire the Ultime to 62mph in 3.8sec and to a top speed of 174mph, well shy of the 200mph club.

The gearbox, too, is a parts-bin raid pinched from the Megane RS. It’s 20kg heavier than any other A110 gearbox and has six gears not seven. But it’s also much stronger internally and can handle the extra torque of the Ultime’s engine ‘no problem’ according to chief engineer Hervé Mailliet. Should owners wish to remap theirs for even more thrust they will be thankful for its new gearbox ‘because it’s usually the transmission that goes first when people try to increase the power,’ says Mailliet. The engine, he says, is rarely the issue. Not that he encourages owners to remap their cars, pointing out that their warranties will be instantly terminated if they do, for all parts of the car, not just the powertrain.

The point is the Ultime isn’t powered by a sonorous or expensive flat-six or bent eight costing zillions to develop. It uses a tuned Renault powertrain mated to a decent but hardly apocalyptic-sounding Akrapovic exhaust, which means its key values lie elsewhere – within its chassis, suspension, brakes and aerodynamics. And on the move that’s how it feels: it’s a car with an acceptably strong powertrain mated to a chassis that has been touched and tuned by genius.

The overall result will either be oddly disappointing or other-world lovely, depending on how you value feel and touch beside pure acceleration and sound. The Ultime has much that’s far harder to achieve – poise and precision – and just about enough of the others. For some that will justify its price but there will be many who think it too slow for the money. And for a few it won’t matter either way because its rarity will be all that counts to earn a return on their investment in future. Maybe.

As well as a new solid rear engine cover and a big rear wing – which adjusts in four different planes to increase downforce to a maximum of around 100kg over the rear axle – there’s also an adjustable drop in ride height plus a raft of styling tweaks around the nose to maximise cooling to the bigger front brakes and gearbox, and help produce another 24kg of downforce over the front axle. Combined, the Ultime produces 124kg of downforce at 150mph which is not much in ultimate terms but welcome on track nonetheless.

The Öhlins dampers are adjustable for bump and rebound, and all you need is a trolley jack and a wheel brace; once the wheel is off the adjustment buttons are there at the top of each damper, with 40 settings for each plane. The ride height is also adjustable via a simple thread screw that’s equally easy to reach.

The front spring rate has been increased by 90 per cent relative to the R, and 40 per cent at the rear combined with a 15 per cent stiffer rear anti-roll bar. The forged alloy rear wheels go up to 19in, the fronts remain at 18in but the brakes are 10mm bigger all round. And they can be repaired, unlike the carbon wheels of the R which had to be replaced at vast expense even if slightly damaged, much to the infuriation of their owners, admits Mailliet.

Despite this alongside a 20kg weightier gearbox, Alpine has managed to keep the Ultime’s kerbweight within a whisker of the R’s. And beside anything else at this level it’s still a genuine featherweight at 1175kg including a driver.

Which explains why it is not just quick but also so beautifully agile and responsive. The brakes are immense, and don’t fade, ever, says Mailliet. When I drive it for a second then third stint and the track begins to dry out, the Ultime’s mighty stopping power – and its grip, feel and touch – all go up a notch again, and I climb out of it fizzing with adrenalin. And wanting more time in it. In a way that you usually need a full blown racing car to achieve.

Road cars, even really fast ones like Ferraris and McLarens always have a limit to how much they can give before the compromises that make them such great road cars begin to take over. They begin to move around under really big loads, their tyres start to overheat: gradually they get worse, not better. The Ultime is the opposite. The harder you push, the better it gets, the faster you go, the closer to the edge you venture in it. Nothing deteriorates – the only limiting factor is how good you think you are, how far you think you can push. That’s a rare thing to discover in a usable road car.

Alpine admits the R is probably the more civilised and comfortable road car but Mailliet says they ended up making the Ultime far better on the road than originally planned. And they ended up in a much better place with it almost by accident, ‘because this is a car for the track first, the road second,’ he says. ‘And on a track it is pretty special, yes?’ he says when I climb out after my third and final session.

Yes Hervé, it’s fantastic. I agree. The Ultime can take you to a place very few other cars of this type know about. It erupts with feel through each and every corner but is also deceptively fast around a track and will, I’m sure, be perfectly usable on the public road if its wet weather manners at Le Mans are anything to go by.

Whether it’s worth the crazy money is for the market to decide. But as a car to simply climb into and drive, and then enjoy, it is worth every penny, and then some. Yet before I drove it I was ready to give it a kicking for being so crass and silly and expensive beside the original. Well there you go…

Ti contributor David Twohig was chief engineer for the Alpine A110 launched in 2018. It was basically ‘his’ car. So what does he make of the £235k A110 R Ultime?

‘I have mixed feelings about it to be honest. I defer totally to you on whether or not it’s any good; I’ve not had the chance to drive it. I am inordinately proud of the fact that the A110 was a (relatively) affordable performance car when we launched it in 2018. Part of me cringes when I see that Alpine struggles to sell the entry level models but can’t build the expensive special versions – priced deep into six figures – fast enough.

‘But my less curmudgeonly side has to doff my hat to the Alpine team that has built the reputation of the brand – and the car – to the point that some customers will pay almost a quarter of a million pounds for what some once scoffed at as a mere hopped-up Renault. Remarkable.

‘But for me, give me a bog-standard entry model for less than £50k all day, every day.’

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