Alpine cars for sale

Overview

Alpine is Renault’s sports car marque, and its guiding idea is the same one Lotus built a company on: keep the weight down and everything else gets easier. The current A110 weighs about 1,100 kg, which is why a 1.8-litre four-cylinder is enough.

History

Jean Rédélé, a Dieppe garage owner, founded Alpine in 1955 after success competing in modified Renault 4CVs; the name came from his run in the Coupe des Alpes. The A110 Berlinette became one of the great rally cars and took the inaugural World Rally Championship in 1973, beating Porsche, Lancia and Ford.

Renault bought the company in 1973 during the oil crisis. Alpine won Le Mans outright in 1978 with the turbocharged A442B. The last A610 was built on 7 April 1995, and the marque lay dormant for 22 years until the modern A110 revived it in 2017. The A290 hatchback was named 2025 European Car of the Year.

In Australia

The A110 was sold here through the distributor Ateco, priced most recently between about $101,000 and $115,000 plus on-road costs — and just 83 were sold across a four-year run. That makes it one of the rarest cars any Australian buyer is likely to encounter on the used market.

It was withdrawn for a regulatory reason rather than a commercial one. ADR 85, the side-impact crash standard that took effect from November 2021, is a requirement the A110 does not meet, so it could no longer be sold new here. Alpine is now being rebuilt as Renault’s electric performance brand, replacing Renault Sport.

Buying a used Alpine

With 83 cars in the country, the market is thin in both directions: finding one takes patience, and the buyer pool when you sell is correspondingly small. Provenance and service history matter more than usual because there is no volume of comparable sales to price against.

Servicing runs through Renault’s network and specialists. The aluminium platform is light and the car is genuinely delicate compared with a Cayman — check carefully for accident repair, and have any prospective purchase inspected by someone who knows the model rather than a general workshop.