2023 Alpine A110S is a lightweight champ

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Here’s everything — everything important, at least — you need to know about Alpine’s A110S. It weighs but 1,109 kilograms. That’s 2,445 pounds, folks, basically the lightest thing you can buy with an engine and a roof. OK, the lightest thing you can buy with an engine, a roof and a turbocharger.

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In this day and age when the only things automakers seem to boast about is horsepower, Alpine’s focus on light weight is refreshing. That will prove doubly so as more and more supercars go electric, their monster power necessary because of all the lithium-ion they have to carry around to power torquey electric motors. The Alpine is powered by a 1.8-litre four-cylinder hooked up to a dual-clutch seven-speed all fed by a small(ish) 45-litre gas tank which means the entire powertrain probably weighs less than the 42-kilowatt-hour battery that powered the little Fiat 500e I drove recently. And when it come comes to performance…  

Light makes might

The A110, in all guises, is powered by a little turbocharged 1.8-litre four spirited from Renault’s Espace V. In “S” guise, it gets a larger whack of boost — 6 psi more to be exact — which bumps things from 249 up to 296 horsepower. Even with that 47-hp bump — and the extra 25 pound-feet of torque those extra six pounds per square inch engender — neither number is frightening. A Civic Type R, for instance, claims 315 hp and, while it certainly is sporty — perhaps even very sporty — it is not even remotely super. 

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On the other hand, nothing else — at least nothing else with elegant Alcantara-clothed seats and steering wheel — with just 296 horsepower accelerates to 100 kilometres in just 4.2 seconds. Or hits 275 kilometres an hour. It’s incredible what an all-aluminum chassis and body can do with just 296 horses. More than enough to handle serious autostrada strafing, 296 hp is also all you need on a twisty Alpine — the mountains, not the car — road if you only have to move, again, 1,109 kilograms. 

And even when you’re not asking for the full banzai, said light weight pays big dividends. The little 1.8L puts out a maximum of 250 pound-feet of torque. Better yet, all of those torques kick in at a subterranean — for a 1.8L four — 2,400 rpm. Combined with those paltry 1,109-kilos, the little Alpine’s powertrain feels more like a big-inch V8 than pipsqueak I4. If you’re just poodling along, gently massaging the throttle, the little four engenders the same effortless, confidence-inspiring response as, say, just brushing the throttle of an Aston Martin Vanquish. Which, of course, has twice the number of pistons. Again, the benefits of those 1,109 kilos. 

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The most unexpected thing about the whole Alpine experience, though, is that, at low revs at least, the bloody little four even sounds like a V8. Seriously, start it up and burble through town and the mid-mounted four does an enviable impression of a Ford Mustang GT, wafting along on the aforementioned wave of torque while rumbling like an American V8 should. At first, I thought it was some sort of piped-in-through-a-speaker trickery. But no, even from the outside, it sounds like a Yankee Doodle Dandy. Impressive exhaust soundtrack sorcery indeed.  

Of course, as much as a favourable power-to-weight ratio is always engaging, acceleration is hardly the A110’s primary attraction. Indeed, if light does make might in the performance arena, then, when it comes to handling…

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Lightness is next to godliness

Light weight means less boosting is needed in the steering box to get the right “feel” through the wheel. Light also means less brake fade, reduced tire stress and, of course, less weight transfer during hard cornering. This last means that for the same amount of roll, the Alpine can ride on comparatively soft springing compared to, say, some monstrous Aventador or particularly porky BMW. 

And indeed, the base A110 runs on relatively — relative to its supercar-like handling — soft springing. That said, the “S” version gets all manner of upgrades, the most serious of which sees its suspension rates at both ends firmed up no less than 50 per cent and the stiffness of its sway bars doubled. Essentially, there’s no roll at all. 

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And let me tell you, I was trying my best to get it to roll, tossing it into the tight, twisty tournantes of the Bernina Pass with as much elan as the extra-gummy Michelin Cup 2s could handle. No roll. Or, at least, no roll that made any never mind to the A110. Stuck like glue to Swiss-Italian tarmac, it rockets through hairpins with a speed that even supercars — even those costing four or five times as much — can match.  The front sticks like glue, the car literally “flicks” into corners and an Alpine A110S is harder to dislodge from an apex than a politician from a microphone.  

Indeed, having played these roads in everything Porsche to Lamborghini, I can attest to the fact that, along with godliness…  

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Lightness is its own virtue

Let’s take a look at the A110S’s competition, shall we. On the mainstream side, we have Porsche’s 718 Cayman. Except that, as “focused” as you might think the Porsche is, a 718 is at least 250 kilograms heavier than the little Alpine. Besides the fact that it will need more horsepower — which many Caymans do — to go faster, it will never, despite wider rubber and tricker suspension, ever feel as lithe and gazelle-like as the A110. For specific reference, the 345-hp Cayman S manages a 4.6-second sprint to 100 kilometres an hour but weighs 1,385 kilograms. That’s 278 kilos (612 pounds!) more than the A110S and if you don’t think you’d notice the difference you’re either not driving fast enough or your roads aren’t twisty enough. 

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Even the once-king of performance-through-lightweighting, Lotus, can’t match the Alpine’s litheness. The upcoming Emira, the last Lotus before electrification, may be powered by more powerful engines — either a 400-hp supercharged version of Toyota’s ubiquitous 3.5L V6 or a 360-pony rendition of Mercedes-AMG’s turbo’ed 2.0-litre four-banger — but it weighs 1,400 kilos as well. We haven’t driven that one yet but, again, it’s hard to disguise 300 kilos.  

Lightness without compromise 

The usual penalty paid for lightweighting is, as with Lotus’s past, an interior that speaks a little too much of the racetrack. Seats that don’t, an interior that only a soapbox racer could appreciate and a fit-and-finish that speaks to an association with Tesla. None of that — OK, almost none of that — afflicts the Alpine. The leather seats are gorgeous, the Alcantara-covered dashboard smells of quality and the panel gaps would do Audi proud. The design — especially the dual layer centre console — is fetching, the switchgear, usually a bugaboo with these supercar types, is easily manipulated and there’s even different digital instrument cluster displays to match the engine and suspension modes. Seriously, this is an interior that would be well at home in a BMW M Coupe… if BMW had an M Coupe that weighed — cue drum roll — only 1,109 kilograms. 

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Perhaps, out of all this, the most surprising aspect of the Alpine is that all this attention to detail is also accompanied by a… 

Lightness of wallet

OK, relative lightness of wallet. Nonetheless, for a super(ish) car so rare and so damnably able, Alpine isn’t asking all that much. In Italy, the base model — 249-hp and (comparatively) soft suspension — retails for just a little over 63,000 Euros, just a tad more than a Toyota Supra. The GT, essentially the S’s higher-performance motor in the base model’s chassis, adds another 10,000 Euros. And the all-singing, all-dancing S goes for 76,050 Euros, which is actually almost 5,000 Euros cheaper than the aforementioned 718 Cayman S, which, in Canada, would cost you CAD$96,435. And the top-of-the-line 718 GTS 4.0, which also can’t match the A110S’ 4.2s sprint to 100 km/h, will set you back $112,042. In other words, exotic and featherweight performance need not always have a Ferrari- or even Porsche-like price tag associated with it.  

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Indeed, Alpine’s A110 remains proof positive that you don’t need 12 pistons, 800 horsepower or even super-wide gummy Pirellis to qualify for supercardom. Light weight not only renders a car both faster and more maneuverable, but it also makes both those qualities more accessible, speed through horsepower often intimidating; through mass minimization not so much. Having tested virtually every supercar of note in the last 20 years or so, I’d have to say that, on the twisty roads that are the reason I come to the Italian Alps every year, the A110S would probably be my first choice of road rocket. That I might actually be able to afford a (used) one just makes the entire package that much more attractive. 

The good news and the bad news

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The bad news first: Alpine is phasing out the ICE-powered A110 in favouring of going all electric by 2026. As much as we celebrate the emissions reduction, the few they sell really wasn’t contributing much to global warming. 

The good news: Alpine will be bringing some of its EVs to North America starting in 2027, namely a couple of battery-powered crossovers that are, to use the Porsche analogy again, Macan- and Cayenne-sized. No word on their performance but let’s hope that some of that lightweighting blesses both. 

Bad news, part deux: An electric version of the A110 will be built, but it is unlikely to be imported to our shores. Worse yet, Alpine is supposedly working on an even hotter version of the Renault 5, but it too is not scheduled to make the journey across the pond. Unfortunately, our love for SUVs is such that homologating perhaps the best little supercars extent doesn’t seem worthwhile. Pity!