Alpine A110 Single Generation

The shape began as Giovanni Michelotti's berlinette body for the A108 and became the A110 when the tail was reworked around the larger Renault 8 engine, wider, more muscular, and cut off flat behind the wheels. What survived the surgery is one of the great silhouettes: a nose low enough to hide behind a guardrail, a roofline that barely clears the driver's head, headlamps faired under glass, and twin Cibié driving lamps added in 1966, the same year the Renault diamond first appeared on the nose. The body is fiberglass bonded over the backbone chassis rather than bolted to it, so panel lines are more suggestion than seam and the whole car reads as a single moulded gesture. Detail changes track the years: chromed vents below the headlights from late 1965, flush push-button door handles from October 1973, and A310 four-stud alloys on late 1600s. Then there is the colour. Alpine blue is as inseparable from this car as red is from Ferrari, and the fact that the 2017 revival launched in the same hue, with the same faired lamps and the same haunches, tells you how little anyone wanted the design improved.

The record book opens with the 1971 Monte Carlo Rally, which Ove Andersson won before Alpine team-mates filled the podium behind him; Andersson went on to take Sanremo, the Austrian Alpenfahrt and the Acropolis that season, sealing the International Championship for Manufacturers. When that series became the World Rally Championship for 1973, Alpine-Renault won the inaugural title outright: six victories from thirteen rounds, another Monte Carlo podium sweep with Jean-Claude Andruet and 'Biche' leading it home, and a final score of 147 points, 63 clear of Fiat, with Lancia, Porsche and Ford further back. The driver roster reads like a French rally hall of fame: Thérier, Darniche, Nicolas, Andruet. There is a technical first in the story too. A turbocharged A110 won the 1972 Critérium des Cévennes, often cited as the first international rally win for forced induction, eight years before Audi made turbochargers orthodoxy. The end came quickly: the purpose-built Lancia Stratos arrived in 1974 and made every converted road car obsolete, the A110 included. The berlinette retired to the historic scene, where it remains a fixture of the Rallye Monte-Carlo Historique.

In France the berlinette occupies the cultural slot the Mustang holds in America: not just an admired car but a shared national memory. It was the car on the newsstand covers when French rallying ruled the world, the shape a generation of schoolboys drew in the margins of their exercise books, and the reason Alpine blue reads as a patriotic colour. The Gendarmerie ran berlinettes in period for fast-pursuit work, and the association stuck well enough that when the modern A110 arrived, the force ordered a fleet of those too. The revival itself is the strongest testament. Renault marked the car's fiftieth anniversary with the A110-50 concept in 2012, then relaunched the road car in 2017 as a faithful homage, same name, same proportions, same blue. The gamble worked and the brand grew around it, to the point that Renault's Formula 1 team now races under the Alpine name. Few cars have carried an entire marque back from the dead. For the original berlinette that is the deepest kind of fame: not a movie cameo, but a car so loved that a whole company was rebuilt in its image.

Rank them by engine, then by honesty of the paperwork. The 1600S is the road-car grail: the aluminium Renault 16 TS engine on twin Weber 45s, 125 horsepower DIN pushing roughly 700 kilograms, and a car that would run 210 km/h in 1969. From May 1973 it took the A310's 1,605cc engine, and from that October the swing-axle rear gave way to double wishbones, a change worth seeking out; the injected 1600SI is the family's rarity. Below it, the 1300S with the tuned 1,296cc Gordini unit is the connoisseur's pick, arguably the best balanced of all, with the milder 1300G a softer twin. The V85, with the Renault 12's 1,289cc engine and four speeds, was the volume car and is the honest way in. The last SX cars carry a single-carb 1,647cc engine and suit touring more than sprinting. Above everything sit the Group 4 cars, 172 horsepower 1600s and later 185 horsepower 1800s, which are competition machinery with competition money attached. License-built Dinalpins from Mexico and FASA cars from Spain widen the net at friendlier prices.

Owning a berlinette is mostly a story about heat, noise and vigilance, and owners will tell you all three are part of the charm. The engine sits behind you in a snug bay and summer traffic warms the cabin; the sound insulation is a fiberglass shell's worth, which is to say nearly none, so long trips are loud. The structural worry is the one you cannot see: the steel backbone lives under bonded fiberglass, and moisture trapped where glass meets metal corrodes the chassis quietly for years. A car that has lived dry, with recent photographic evidence of its underside, is worth real money over one that has not. Gel-coat crazing and small stress cracks are normal and honest on an old fiberglass body; fresh paint over a wavy panel deserves questions. Early swing-axle cars ask for respect in the wet until you learn their language. The electrics are simple, and the engines are tough Renault fours that ask for nothing exotic. Most of what fails is cheap. The one thing that is not cheap is neglect of the chassis, which is why the good cars stay good and the projects stay projects.