The Master and the Pupil: Alpine A110s

That first Alpine-Renault A110 is one of the prettiest road cars I have seen. Even this hard-worked example, covered in stickers depicting its recent life as a competitor in historic road rallies, packs a blend of purpose and pulchritude you rarely find anywhere else. But I think I like the interior more, with those gorgeous Veglia dials seen through an unimprovable drilled three spoke Momo wheel. Even if you removed all the navigation equipment, it would be all purpose in here. Nothing else. There’s not even a handle to grab onto to shut the door.

The way it is constructed could have less in common with that of the modern A110, but not much. The newer car uses a bonded, riveted and welded aluminium tub onto which are bolted aluminium body panels. It has aluminium double unequal length wishbones for suspension and uses a turbocharged engine running through a seven-speed dual-clutch gearbox. The original uses a steel backbone chassis – a method very much in vogue in the 1960s era of the Lotus Elan – to which is attached a body made entirely from glass-fibre, again just like the Lotus. The suspension is by way of wishbones only up front and uncompromising swing axles at the back.

As for engines, it’s hard to know where to start, but if you include road and competition cars, capacities extended from 1-litre to 1.8-litres, power from as little as 55bhp to as much as 185bhp. ‘Our’ 1974 car has a non-standard 1.4-litre version of the pushrod four, sucking air through a pair of twin choke Weber 40mm DCOE carburettors and is in a very healthy state of tune indeed – around 120bhp healthy we are told, which I can absolutely believe.

One more thing: the modern A110 has rightly been praised to the rafters for the dedication of its engineers – none more so than its chief engineer and Ti regular David Twohig – to expunging every unwelcome gram and bring its kerbweight in at a little above or below 1100kg according to model or spec. It is a fabulous achievement. But the old ‘un, smaller by degrees as it is and without the need for so much as a seat-belt’s worth of safety equipment? About 700kg. With that little weight and an engine mounted entirely behind the rear axle line, no wonder it did well on low grip surfaces.

But I’m going to drive the new car first. I think it’s very possible this will be the final time I drive the only car ever to be given a 10/10 rating by us and it occupies a place in my heart few modern cars can approach, even though it’s powered by a four-cylinder turbo motor out of a Megane running through a dual-clutch transmission and not the bespoke 2-litre V6 spinning to 9000rpm fed into a five-speed manual with dog leg first of my dreams.

Actually, I like this engine. To me it has character, an appropriate torque spread and works well whether you’re in Sainsbury’s, on the M4 or amid the twisties on your favourite roads. But what I like best about it is how well matched it is to the chassis. The ‘hot’ 300bhp engine in the A110 S and this GTS is fine, but actually it has no more torque than the standard 252bhp A110 (it just holds onto it for longer) so in the real world there’s little perceived difference until you’re right at the top of the rev range. Both are just as capable of dishing out just the right amount of workload to keep that chassis feeling alive in your hands.

And alive it truly feels. Actually, and quite by chance what we have here is the worst possible setup for an A110, because not only does the GTS sit on ride-wrecking stiffer suspension, but this particular example was fitted with Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2 tyres which provide either far too much or not nearly enough grip depending on whether their temperature is within their favoured operating window, or not. And even that couldn’t spoil the fun.

We’ve said it before, but even if you’re used to really well engineered conventional sporting coupés, like Porsche Caymans, when you drive one that similar levels of talent, effort and expertise has been expended upon but which is as much as 300kg lighter, you realise there is a whole other level of intimacy and involvement out there waiting for you. The way it satisfies the desires of the most discerning driver while, at the same time, providing an environment in which you’d be happy to pass many hours in all manner of conditions is this car’s crowning achievement and now the Cayman is no longer on sale, its position in the market place is unique and currently unassailable. A pity then, that it too is heading to the great showroom in the sky where it will join the Cayman as we look forward to their all-electric and possibly partly hybridised replacements.

Why didn’t it sell, then? There are all sorts of possible reasons: people didn’t fall for an off-the-shelf turbo four motor, no manual option, two-seaters never sell in volume and so on, but I think it is predominately down to the badge. While you and I might revere the Alpine name and consider Jean Rédélé one of the greatest unsung heroes of the industry, out there in the wider world, I think people would just rather be seen in a Porsche.

But now we must turn to the other A110, which unlike the new car is a true Rédélé original and surely the crowning achievement from over 20 years at the head of the company he founded in 1952. If it is of interest, he sold a controlling share of the company to Renault in 1973 and gradually retreated from the business. He didn’t want to give it up, but the combination of the oil crisis, the development costs of the A310 and difficulties with the unions at the Dieppe plant gave him no choice if the name was to survive. Sadly he didn’t live long enough to see its rebirth, dying in 2007, a full decade before the reveal of the new A110 and while the brand was functionally moribund.

For some reason, climbing aboard made me think of the Ferrari F40. I guess it’s just the purity of focus you find. A simple dash, simple switchgear and the only concession to creature comfort being a fag lighter and ashtray between the seat where your Gauloises sans filtre is meant to reside when not clamped between your rapidly yellowing teeth.

The driving position is not great, compromised as it is by the ingress of the nearside front wheel into the space where you’d ideally like to find your feet. In the event the clutch is almost directly in line with the steering column meaning you have to sit at an ever so slight diagonal across the car. But given the car’s tiny dimensions, the surprise is that there’s room in here, even for 6ft 3in me. I’d not say there was sprawling space, but there’s plenty of headroom and enough space for my knees to splay around the wheel. The only real issue is the absence of anywhere to put your left foot when it’s not doing its thing.

The engine starts readily by either the turn of the key or press of a button. It’s a fairly flat blare at first, but as soon as you give it a blip and let the Webers suck in some air, that characteristic hard and sharp edge can soon be heard. It’s almost exactly the same sound made by my Caterham which, given that it too is a pushrod four breathing through exactly the same carbs, is perhaps not such a surprise.

It has a five-speed gearbox and a wonderfully tactile milled aluminium head on the gearlever. Its action is very mechanical but a little vague, especially when going across the gate from second to third. Hooking first by mistake would not be difficult were you in a hurry, and strong though the Renault 16-derived motor clearly is, I’m not sure it would put up with that.

Unlike the new A110, this is actually not a car you feel secure in throwing about from the off. The car or, perhaps I should say this car, seems a little unhappy, restless even, just pootling about, following a camera car. You drive it mechanically; it’s not yet starting to flow.

But when our photographic duties are complete, or at least paused, there’s time to dig a little deeper and find what lies beneath this surprisingly enigmatic car. And it does get better, the harder you try. The snarl of that engine is not something I’ll forget in a while and the gearlever just needs careful aiming to slot home every time. The steering is delicious too and that sense of lightness in the immediacy of its responses cannot be faked. All those who go on about how well modern heavy cars disguise their weight so well with four-wheel steering, active torque vectoring and so on really should have a go in one of these to appreciate what a truly lightweight car feels like. There is no faking it.

And yet neither Dan nor I, with rather more than half a century of road testing experience between us, ever felt truly comfortable in its behaviour, enough to go nibbling about near the limit. It wasn’t that swing axle rear suspension, unnerving though it can be in the hands of those unversed in the capricious nature of the configuration. Having driven far more than my fair share of 300 SL Mercedes and Porsche 356s, I know how to drive swing axle cars (if you’d like a sprawlingly broad generalisation, keep your foot in), but even driven accordingly it never really settled down. Why I could not say, though were I the owner I’d direct my suspicions first towards the eight-year-old Vredestein mud and snow tyres that clothed those gorgeous little 13in split rim alloys. Even at that age they could still be good enough in their preferred environment, but this was not it.

Not that this really cast much of a dampener on the day. It’s not the first old A110 I’ve driven and I recall no such issues with the 1600S I drove a few years back. And besides, this is not a hard-nosed twin test but a perhaps belated look at how the A110 of today honours the spirit of the original as it too slips into the parallel world of yesterday.

It does it superbly. No, the new car never won a rally nor even a significant motor race but to be able to produce a car like that, despite all the hurdles the modern world erected before its designers – a car so light, fun, pure and true to the Alpine spirit is no lesser an achievement and something of which they should be immensely proud. Though I never met him, I just know that, had he lived, Jean Rédélé would feel exactly the same way too.

Photography by Dean Smith