Alpine is taking the A110 racing

Customer racecars are BIG business nowadays. With more homogenous racing regulations around the world, it doesn’t matter if you want a full-on supercar or a diddy hatchback as a base, manufacturers are more than happy to strip them of any form of comfort, slap on a massive wing and stick some slick tyres at each corner... then wait for you to bury yourself in a gravel trap. 

There’s a new manufacturer in town: Alpine. OK, newish, as it’s technically Renault, a company who has form in the field by producing cars for customers; from the feisty Clio Cup to the incredibly capable RS.01. This new mid-engined junior A110 racer feels like a good thing.

Details are thin at best, with the only proper modification outlined as a roll-cage. And we’ve only got the sketch above to go off. But as it’s a racecar, we can assume a few more things. Like the addition of some aerodynamic appendages, sticky tyres, adjusted suspension geometry (if not actual parts) and the complete lack of an interior or road-car niceties.

The new road car’s design is an unashamed retro nod to the original and incredibly dinky Alpine A110, which famously also went racing (in 1985 and 1988 there was an Alpine Cup with Alpine GTA Europa Cup cars), so we’ve now gone full circle. Yippee.

There’s no word on performance, but given the road car is pleasingly light at 1,080kg, stripping it of road car flimflam should see it drop beneath a tonne. Like its two closest rivals – the 718 Cayman and Alfa 4C – the road car uses a four-cylinder turbocharged petrol engine. That 1.8-litre producing 249bhp and 236lb ft should stay. But squeezing a bit more go out of it wouldn’t be hard, and we’d be disappointed if it didn’t.

The racy A110 is set to race in a one-make championship around Europe with a grid of 20 cars. With Signatec (who are a part of Alpine’s LMP2 race team) designing, producing and making sure it sails through FIA-homologation, they’re also selling the cars. Prices aren’t announced yet, but if you’re interested in getting out of junior motorsport and into something a bit more serious but cheaper than GT4, we’d consider this as an option.

We’ll bring you more details and pictures when we can.