Why we’re running it: To see if the Alpine A110, one of the world’s best driver’s cars, can also prove sufficiently easy to live with for it still to make sense
Month 1 - Specs
Life with an Alpine A110: Month 1
Welcoming the A110 to the fleet - 21 December 2022
Can it really be five years since we first saw it? Half a decade since I first sat in an Alpine A110 and knew that today was going to be a different day before I was even out of the car park? It seems it can.
It’s fair to say the A110 has not exactly tumbled out of the showrooms in that time, despite as rapturous a reception in the motoring media as enjoyed by any new car that I can remember. Turns out that when the choice is between the most exquisite, balanced handling from a car designed to be as light and responsive as possible, or one with a posh badge on the nose, most people would rather have the Porsche.
As a thing to drive, it is their loss. I’m a huge Cayman fan, but you’ll only get the base model with its unlovely flat-four engine for this money, and while it’s more powerful, by the time its additional quarter tonne of avoirdupois is factored in, the two cars’ respective power to weight ratios are as near as makes no difference. And the Alpine is smaller and more delicate and just plain fun to drive.
But as a thing to live with? That’s what the next six months are about. So don’t expect me to spend that time gushing relentlessly over its on-limit handling or the deftness of its damping. There’ll be some of that, I’m sure, but what I really want to find out is whether an A110 works not just in theory and in the road testers’ fantasy realm of mountain passes and race tracks, but here in the real world.
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I'm sure it's a jolly fine car and I like lightweight design ethos. But £50k is still a lot to spend on a car for most of us, especially one that is effectively auto only.
Plenty of cars at this price level and most of them are auto. The problem is that not enough people value lightweight unique engineering. This Alpine is a much better value proposition than any £50k SUV but that's what people want unfortunately.
You mean worse value than a £50k SUV.