Alpine A610

The A610's shape is really the GTA's shape, and that's a function of money rather than ambition: Alpine had a limited budget to replace a car that hadn't sold well, so the new model kept the GTA's stepped glasshouse, large rear windscreen and 0.30 drag coefficient almost entirely intact. What changed was the nose. Where the GTA wore fixed headlights, the A610 adopted pop-up quad units reworked from the GTA's stillborn federalised US version, along with lower body scoops and a smoother front bumper that helped push weight forward on the chassis. Both cars, like the A310 before them, used bodywork moulded from a large number of separate glassfibre and polyester panels rather than one piece, a manufacturing choice that cut build time from roughly 130 hours to 77 and made the whole run financially possible for a niche manufacturer. Inside, the dashboard and switchgear were shared closely with mainstream Renaults of the period, and it's the one area evo's road testers called dated even when the car was new. The exterior, low, wide-hipped and drawn by Yves Legal, still reads as a coherent, purposeful shape decades on, unhelped by any badge recognition it never had.

Alpine never built a factory racing programme around the A610, but the car found its own way onto a track that mattered. In 1994, French tuner Patrick Legeay entered a privately prepared A610 at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, running a factory-lightened chassis from 34th on the grid. Drivers Benjamin Roy, Luc Galmard and Jean-Claude Police brought it home 13th overall and 5th in GT2, ahead of the Kremer team's Honda NSX, a genuine giant-killing result for a production-based coupe with next to no factory backing. It remains the only Le Mans entry the A610 ever made, and Alpine's last appearance at the race under its own name. That same year, two A610s served as official safety cars at the 1994 British Grand Prix at Silverstone, a visible if minor role that put the car in front of a Formula One crowd. None of this built the kind of racing pedigree that defines cars like the 911, and Alpine's own competition history by this point ran through rallying and the earlier A110 rather than the A610. What the Le Mans result does prove is that the chassis had real ability underneath it, whether or not Alpine ever chose to spend money proving it.

The A610's cultural footprint is small but pointed, and most of it comes from people who actually drove one. At Performance Car magazine's 1992 Car of the Year contest at Cadwell Park, staff writer John Barker entered the A610 against the Lancia Delta Integrale Evo II, Ford Escort Cosworth and TVR Griffith 4.3, and it came home second, beaten only by the BMW M5. Fellow judge Kevin Blick, who later edited Top Gear magazine, dismissed it in his notes as plastic and French with the engine at the wrong end, and still ranked it fifth of ten, ahead of the Lancia and the TVR. Fifteen years later the car found a less flattering kind of fame: in Jeremy Clarkson's 2007 direct-to-DVD film Supercar Showdown, the production destroyed a well presented, rare right-hand-drive A610 by driving it into a concrete barrier, a stunt that still surfaces on Alpine owners' forums whenever someone wants to start an argument. None of it amounts to mainstream recognition. The A610 has always been known in depth by a small number of people rather than in passing by a great many, and that is exactly the kind of car it was built to be.

The A610's problems are almost all hidden, which is both the good news and the bad news. Day to day it's a usable, reasonably reliable car: the wet-liner PRV V6 is conventional under the turbo plumbing, and the five-speed gearbox and driveline give little trouble if serviced. The biggest routine irritant, a random cutting-out fault that plagued UK cars, was eventually traced to heat-confused wiring at the crank sensor and is curable with better wiring or a modern ECU. What isn't routine is what's underneath. The steel backbone chassis and rear subframe can rot from the inside, and because the glassfibre body is bonded directly over the structure, rust often isn't visible until it's expensive. Door hinge pins wear and let doors drop over time. Interior trim, most of it unique to a car built in the low thousands, was scarce even when Renault still supported it and is now genuinely hard to source, so a car missing switchgear or upholstery can turn into a real project rather than a quick fix. None of this makes the A610 a bad car to own. It makes it a car where the pre-purchase inspection matters more than the test drive, and where a straight, rust-free example is worth paying up for.