Société des Automobiles Alpine SAS,[5] commonly known as Alpine, is a French manufacturer of sports cars and racing cars established in 1955. The Alpine car marque was created in 1954.
Jean Rédélé, the founder of Alpine, was originally a Dieppe garage proprietor who began to achieve success in motorsport with the Renault 4CV, one of the few French cars produced after the Second World War. The company has been closely associated to Renault throughout its history, and was bought by it in 1973.[6]
The Alpine competition department merged into Renault Sport in 1976. Renault phased out the Alpine brand in 1995, but relaunched it with the 2017 introduction of the new Alpine A110. Renault later merged Renault Sport again into Alpine in January 2021, forming an Alpine business unit.
Alpine became an electric vehicle brand with the 2024 introduction of the new Alpine A290. As part of its global expansion, Alpine in 2023 announced plans to enter the North American market in 2027 with a mid-size electric crossover and a large electric SUV.
History
Early days
Using Renault 4CVs, Jean Rédélé gained class wins in a number of major events, including the Mille Miglia and Coupe des Alpes. As his experience with the 4CV grew, he incorporated many modifications, including special five-speed gearboxes replacing the original three-speed unit. To provide a lighter car, he built a number of special versions with lightweight aluminium bodies, driving them at Le Mans and Sebring with some success in the early 1950s.
Encouraged by the development of these cars and subsequent customer demand, he created the Alpine brand in 1954. It was named "Alpine" after his Coupe des Alpes successes.[2] He did not realise that in England the previous year, Sunbeam had introduced a sports coupe derived from the Sunbeam Talbot, named the "Sunbeam Alpine". This naming issue caused problems for Alpine throughout its history.
In 1955, Rédélé worked with the carrosserie Chappe et Gessalin
Operations
Dieppe plant
The first assembly plant for Alpine was at a small workshop owned by Rédélé on the Pasteur avenue in Dieppe. In 1969, to cope with increasing demand, the assembly was moved to a larger facility on de Bréauté avenue, its present location.[2][34]
The Dieppe plant has 3.8 hectares of covered buildings. As of 2019, it had 386 employees.[35]
The plant is semi-automatised, with high worker input (before the launch of the 2017 A110, vehicles were almost completely hand-built) and focuses on low-volume, high quality assembly. It can produce an average of 15 A110s per day. The plant presses neither steel nor aluminium (the A110s are mostly built on prefabricated alloy panels). The plant has no welding section, as the A110 chassis and bodywork are riveted and glued on a special assembly line and moved to a low-temperature coating plant (able to paint both the alloy and plastic elements) and then to a sanding robot (to remove imperfections) and wiping robot (to clean the vehicle). Final assembly is made on a single line, with logistics teams preparing the vehicle's components beforehand to travel along the line with it.
Leadership
Alpine models
Street models
Current
Former
- A106 (1955–1961)
- A108 (1958–1965)
- A110 (1962–1977)
- GT4 (1963–1969)
- A310 (1971–1984)
- GTA (1984–1991)
- A610 (1991–1995)
Current
Former
Awards
European Car of the Year
- 2025 : Alpine A290[53]
Alpines outside France
Brazil
The Alpine 108 was produced in Brazil from 1962 to 1966, under license by Willys-Overland do Brasil, branded "Willys Interlagos". It was the first Brazilian sports car.[54]
Bulgaria
Bulgaria produced its own version of an Alpine, known as Bulgaralpine from 1967 to 1969. About 150 vehicles were produced.[55]
Canada
A few examples of the Alpine GTA were imported into the Canadian province of Quebec, with the expectation that AMC/Renault would be adding the model to their Canadian lineup. The GTA was designed by Renault to meet North American standards, however plans to import the GTA to North America were cancelled by Chrysler shortly after their takeover of AMC.
Sponsorship
In 2025, Alpine will sponsor Pramac Racing for the second time, despite now being a Yamaha satellite team in MotoGP 2025. Alpine has confirmed it will work with the Pramac MotoGP team for the 2025 season, becoming the Italian team's "main partner".[57]
External links
References
- Legally registered on 6 July 1955.^
- Roy Smith. Alpine and Renault: The Development of the Revolutionary Turbo F1 Car 1968 to 1979 Veloce Publishing, 2008^
- Krief replaces Rossi as CEO of Renault's Alpine brand Reuters, 20 July 2023, retrieved 2023-07-20^