A mid-life crisis used to be a straightforward business. A bad leather jacket which creaked with every movement of your limbs, a doomed affair with the first wholly inappropriate person you could find and, for maximum impact, a two-seater sports car to ensure anyone who hadn’t yet seen (or heard) your leather jacket in person knew exactly what was going on in your fragile head.
The modern version, however, just feels like a lot of hard work. The jacket’s been replaced by voluntary work, the affair’s been swapped for running ultra marathons with extra points for being medivacked out of foreign deserts, while the car has been pushed out by phenomenally expensive road bikes you have to actually pedal yourself.
But then something comes along with the power to restore faith in the old ways.
While sitting at a red light in the new Alpine A110, one of only two LHD cars in the country, on the streets of Southall (don’t ask), a black Mercedes on the inside lane began reversing towards me. The window went down. “What is it, mate?” asked the driver.
“An Alpine,” I said, making sure to pronounce it with the correct second syllable “een”.
“A what?” he asked. The traffic is quite loud in Southall.
“An Alpine,” I shouted, pretty sure it wasn’t the place to explain Alpine’s racing and rallying heritage (the Alpine name came from its agility around mountain passes when rallying), its long association with Renault and how the 1969 A110 Berlinette car remains one of the classiest and most eye-catching sports cars ever made, designed by one of the greats of 20th-century car design, Giovanni Michelotti. Especially not to a complete stranger who sees no problem reversing down a dual carriageway.
“It’s nice, bruv,” he said, sizing it up for a final time before heading off. And it wasn’t the only time this point was made by total strangers over a weekend that went by far too quickly.
The design team have managed to nail that awkward 'retro modern' look that’s all too easy to get badly wrong with cutesy parody. Just enough original cues have been carried over and in just the right way. You might remember the blocky Eighties Alpine that garnered something of a cult affection but only now, 50 years later, comes an Alpine that’s truly worthy of its ancestor and bears no small resemblance in both looks and principles.
The Alpine DNA is basically light, agile and fast and all three have been carefully developed. The car comes in at a super-svelte 1,103kg thanks to an aluminium chassis and body. Its low road position and snug, stripped-back two-seater cabin give it a direct and exciting edge from the moment you sit in the bucket seats, which you’ll happily remain encased in for hours at a time.
Its size and road position mean only a turbo 1.8-litre engine is necessary to pull it purposefully around. The engine sound itself isn’t likely to endanger recent cardiac patients but it whirrs determinedly rather than throbs and suits the car’s calm and capable character. In Sport mode, the car gets an adrenaline shot with gearbox, engine, dynamics, steering and exhaust all finding another level. When the turbo blasts and fizzes, it’s hard not to have a slightly manic grin on your face. And all this for just over £50,000.
Bad news is that the first run of 1,955 Première Éditions has already sold out but, thankfully, the rally-referencing Pure and GT-styled Légende iterations are on their way.
The Alpine A110 is a car that makes you pine for a world of completely empty roads, perhaps only realistically achieved through some kind of zombie apocalypse or mass population reduction. But failing that, a very fun and tasteful mid-life crisis.
