DAY 7: Mind my French

We hope you’re singing along to our favourite carol: the 12 days of carsmas. We must say, it’s a bleeding treat. Oops! Mind my French, please! And today, we’re in fact Frenching it up with Renault.

Renault, for the better part of its life, has been known to make boring little hatchbacks, sedans and some SUVs – and dare we say, the budget kind. They’re not the world’s leading authority in quality and performance. Infact, not even close.

But they’re not all that bad. For starters, they do have an F1 team. They’ve had a few fun cars in their portfolio too. They have the Clio RS and the Megane RS and that’s just about it.

Back in 1973, Renault bought this small manufacturer called Alpine. Think about Alpine a little like you would about AMG and Mercedes. Alpine used to rework the Renault 4CVs to go racing. They’ve had quite some success with the 4CV and thought they’d start building their own cars based off Renaults.

They did. They made a machine in the 1960s called the A110. Powered by engines from a Renault R8, these coupes go on to win the World Rally Championship.

Then came the oil crisis in the 70s and no one wanted sports cars anymore and slowly but surely, Alpine died.

Until now.

Alpine is back. And it’s brought back the A110. It only weighs 1100 kilograms and has 250 ponies on tap thanks to a 1.8L turbocharged inline-4 from Renault. What makes it better is the fact that this is a mid-engine car.

From a standstill, it’ll do 100kmph in 4.5 seconds and won’t stop moving until the limiter which is set to 250kmph.

They tweaked the A110 furthermore and released the A110S. Power goes up to 290hp and features a better suspension setup while weight goes up a little bit. All that shaves 0.1 seconds of its time to 100kmph.

This maybe the most exciting mid-engine car to come out this decade. Sure, the Cayman GT4 is more potent but it’s a whole different feat to come back from the dead. With quite the bang too.

12 Days of Carsmas

So, how did you like to French it up with us on the seventh day of carsmas?

Check in daily as we post a new car for every day of carsmas.

You can see the entire list here: https://mikaniki.com/news/2019/12/the-12-days-of-carsmas/