LIFE110 Alpine A110 R review

David also took the seemingly counterproductive decision to remove the carbon fibre wheels and fit new forged wheels that are heavier by 2kg apiece. Why intentionally add weight to what’s supposed to be a more uncompromising car? For one thing, the carbon wheels are no wider than the 18in rims fitted to basic A110s, whereas the forged wheels seen here are wider by half an inch with a wider offset too. That means bigger tyres, more rubber on the road and hence more grip.

Besides, anyone who has lived with a set of carbon wheels will know what a pain they can be. There are question marks around their durability, and if you damage one, you’re in for a bill running to several thousands of pounds. Should a mate do that for you, the conversation is going to be horribly uncomfortable. For those reasons, I’ve long since decided that carbon fibre wheels are not worth their weight saving, but I suspect some A110 R owners wanted to leave their carbon wheels in situ having already paid handsomely for them.

Power is up to 306bhp while torque rises to 295lb ft, up from the R’s 296bhp and 251lb ft. New gearbox software promises faster shifts, too. With a full tank of fuel but no occupants, the LIFE110 A110 R weighs just 1089kg.

Sitting closer to the road with a more prominent front splitter and adjustable rear wing, plus those forged motorsport-style wheels, the LIFE110 car looks every inch the road racer. This isn’t about turning the A110 into a purebred track car, the kind of thing that’s all but unusable on the public highway but scintillating on circuit. David reckons he’s identified some prime real estate between the surprisingly rounded A110 R and a hypothetical track day hero – a sweet spot between those two points.

He hasn’t upgraded the standard Sachs dampers because they’re already fit for purpose. Manually adjustable, they’re left in roughly a midway setting. He says you would only go any stiffer for a very fast and very smooth race track, and while you could click them all the way back to fully soft for a long drive to a circuit, for instance, you would then be driving an under-damped car that would feel floaty on its springs.

The point of this exercise is to draw the radical side out of the A110 – to finally make sense of those carbon seats and harnesses. Anything but an inertia reel belt is a pain in normal driving, but the very second you begin stretching a car on a great road, harnesses become a real bonus, and never more so than here. This is a car where the sense of connection is everything, where feeling strapped into it so you can sense every infinitesimal slip from a tyre, every fractional shift in weight across the axles, is vital.

The seats themselves look bare-boned, but they’re padded in all the right places so you feel clamped into them but not uncomfortable. Even on those far stiffer springs, this thing glides like an Alpine should. You feel the road surface and the car is busy over bumps, but it doesn’t crash or thump or make you wince, and it doesn’t catch a camber in the road surface and drag you across its width. A 718 Cayman GT4 RS is way tougher in that respect; this is much more like a 911 GT3, but with far less weight. The ride gets better with speed, too.

What those springs give you is massive agility, response and precision, as well as the kind of body control that means you just don’t think about the road’s third dimension, nor worry about the car’s weight lurching this way or that. Body control is absolute. A110s tend to have light steering and so it is here, to the extent that you must dial yourself into that lightness before you begin to feel the messages flow back towards you. Once that’s happened, you find a rack that’s so sharp, so accurate that steering becomes unconscious.

You learn to grip the wheel lightly, steering with fingertips, your inputs so slight a passenger would think you weren’t steering at all. This car is so obedient in direction changes it’s like a Navy SEAL Belgian Malinois; so attentive to its handler’s instructions it’s essentially another limb. You command this car with tiny inputs and it responds instantaneously. Everything else is made to feel like an unruly young Rottweiler straining at its leash, you holding on with both hands.

In corners it is exceptionally well balanced, and if you’re too greedy with an entry speed or too sudden when reapplying power, you’ve made whatever correction needs to be made before you’ve even realised it. It’s that sort of machine.

To flick this car into a quick bend, to feel it yaw and roll at once as it darts into the curve, to sit it down on the massive grip of its warm Michelin Cup 2 tyres and feel them bite without faltering, to sense through the wheel rim and the seat that you’re strapped into the grip build down the side of the car… that’s what driving a hardcore sports car should be all about. Over a hillside road, this thing is bewitching.

If it has a weakness, like any other A110 it is the powertrain. But really, it’s as good as it needs to be to let the chassis shine. We’re used to modern turbo engines being more responsive than this and the seven-speed dual-clutch gearbox isn’t the fastest out there, but when you’re running the motor out beyond 6000rpm and rowing through the gears, not one part of you is thinking about shift speeds or throttle response. Instead you savour the swell of torque and enjoy what is actually quite an invigorating soundtrack. The latest version of the must-have LIFE110 gearshift paddles are excellent, too.

What the powertrain does do is punch you along the road hard and fast enough to bring the rest of the car to life. A Ferrari 296 GTB would dust this thing in a straight line, but under braking and through a turn the Alpine would close back in and fill its mirrors like a white van on a bypass. I’ve no doubt this machine will humble much more exotic cars on road and track.

What’s so clever about the work done here is that you do feel fully engaged with it at seven-tenths, a core part of the process of driving even well short of the limit, and it’s perfectly usable on the public highway. But when the traffic clears and the road ahead opens up, it is sensational to drive as hard as you dare. The LIFE110 upgrade does at long last realise the A110’s potential, but without rendering it some unbearable, unforgiving track monster.

But perhaps these upgrades don’t go anything like far enough. Maybe there is yet more potential waiting to be unleashed. Alpine certainly thinks so – earlier this week it announced the A110 R Ultime, the most extreme version of the A110. Just 110 will be built, each carrying a price tag of €265,000 (certain variants will cost as much as €330,000), making it by a factor of at least two the most expensive four-cylinder car on sale.

It has wild aero modifications to generate more downforce than the A110 R, while power is up to 345bhp and torque to 310lb ft, thanks in part to a new, bigger turbo, while an entirely new gearbox has been installed to cope with all that extra muscle. There are adjustable Öhlins, uprated brakes and, I was interested to read, forged rather than carbon fibre wheels front and back.

It all comes at an almighty cost. Meanwhile, LIFE110’s complete upgrade package costs £9782 and pre-owned A110 Rs can be bought for less than £90,000. If I had one kept aside for weekend and track use, I’d be beating down David Pook’s door in a heartbeat.

Springs £480; forged wheels £4065; splitter lowering kit £70; rear wing uprights £950; rear wing endplates £1245; engine and gearbox ECU tune £840; track brake pads £300; rear brake pads £189; braided brake lines £138; 330mm brake discs £1260; CNC machined shift paddles £245. Total kit £9782 (all excluding VAT)

Photography by Nathan Morgan

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