Alpine A110
MODEL TESTED LEGENDE GT
Does a dash more performance make this run-out pre-facelift car the ultimate A 110?
PHOTOGRAPHY JON BRADSHAW
Price
£61,665 ⬤ Power 288bhp ⬤Torque 236lb ft ⬤0-60mph 4.8sec ⬤ 30-70mph in fourth 5.9sec ⬤ Fuel economy 36.9mpg ⬤CO 2 emissions 153-158g/km ⬤ 70-0mph 54.8m
We like
• Handling is more settled, grippy and precise than regular A110
• Underlying balance and adjustability are still present
• Has a bit more audible character than entry-level car
We don’t like
• Only marginally quicker than regular A110 – and only when revving hard
• For £62,000, it’s getting dangerously close to some very good opponents
I t’s unusual to know quite so much about the whole life cycle of a sports car, both past and future, as we already do about the Alpine A110. We know, for instance, that while the first examples were delivered in mainland Europe in 2017, the last will be made sometime in early 2024, before the firm’s Dieppe factory is repurposed for production of its allnew family of electric Alpine models.
There is to be an electric successor to the current A110 developed alongside Lotus, of course, but also a performance version of the Renault 5 electric hatchback and a slightly bigger electric crossover coupé. Just which of those cars will be made at Dieppe, and which elsewhere, remains to be seen, but it’s a safe bet that there won’t be room for combustion-engined cars there any longer. The clock is clearly ticking for the piston-engined A110, then. It has already spawned a number of special editions, not to mention a full hat-trick of motorsport versions (Cup, GT4 and Rally). But, on the eve of the arrival of a facelifted A110, we are now taking the chance to run the road test rule over what, in principle, looks like the definitive version of the pre-facelift car: the Légende GT.
This model is a chimaera of a kind: an A110 with the softer chassis settings of the mid-range Légende derivative but the uprated 288bhp engine, brakes and sports exhaust of the track-day-ready A110 S (a car whose firmer suspension and more purposeful execution haven’t been taken to quite as keenly in this parish as simpler, freer-f lowing versions of the A110). So does that make this limited edition the perfect version of a sports car that has already hit some spectacular high notes over the past four years? Let’s find out.
DESIGN AND ENGINEERING
The Alpine A110’s mechanicals were left mostly unchanged for its first couple of years, the biggest news before the arrival of the A110 S at the end of 2019 being the range realignment that brought 17in wheels and a sub-1100kg kerb weight to the entry-level Pure-spec version.
The car sticks with an underbody monocoque construction that is 96% aluminium, then; has aluminium body panels fixed to the outside; aluminium-intensive doublewishbone axles underneath; and Renault-Nissan’s lightweight, 1798cc four-cylinder turbocharged M5R petrol engine, also seen (in slightly different tune) in the latest Renault Mégane RS, mounted midships behind the cabin with the crankshaft running across the chassis. A sevenspeed dual-clutch gearbox takes drive rearwards via an open differential.