Buy This Stunning Alpine A110 For Less Than A New VW Golf GTI

The Alpine A110 is perhaps the ultimate ‘if you know, you know’ car of our era. There’s a good chance bystanders won’t know what it is at all, and lots of enthusiasts write it off in favour of things like Porsche Caymans and Lotus Emiras because it only offers a turbocharged four-cylinder and a dual-clutch gearbox, not a meaty six-pot and a manual.

For those that get the appeal, though, there’s nothing else like it. Its blend of super lightweight philosophy and razor-sharp handling with genuine usability make it a unique prospect among modern cars, and while it’s always been a bit of a niche prospect, those who do own them swear by them.

That’s perhaps part of the reason they seem to have pretty strong residuals, but prices for these wonderful cars are beginning to drop into new hot hatch territory. Take the new Golf GTI – the car you think of when you think ‘hot hatch’. The recently-updated version starts at £38,900 in the UK, and that gets you a whole lot of A110.

We’ve found this 2018 example that’s up for sale with a main Alpine dealer for a fiver under £37,000. A 2018 car, it’s a relatively early UK example, but its one owner so far has enjoyed it sparingly, racking up just 13,651 miles. Whoever they are, though, we can’t fault them for taste.

Eschewing the usual Bleu Alpine, this slightly posher Legende model is finished in a darker blue, paired with a brown leather interior, and topped off with those excellent retro wheels.

As an early car, this gets the basic 249bhp version of the 1.8-litre turbo four-pot, but in a car that weighs just a shade over 1100kg, that’s still good for 62mph in 4.5 seconds, 155mph and some of the most magnificently sharp handling in any modern car.

Its MOT history is largely clean, save for one fail earlier this year for a fractured rear spring. This seems to be a fairly common issue on A110s, and one that’s presumably been rectified on this car. It also hails from before the A110 got CarPlay, so you’ll either have to suffer the rubbish native infotainment or get new software retrofitted.

These are small gripes, though, for a car that brings junior supercar vibes to pretty much any situation, is reasonably affordable to run, and is unlike anything else when the right stretch of road presents itself.

It’s proving a busy month for Alpine – it’s just confirmed that it’s working on a supercar, which may or may not be electric, and later this month, we’ll see a concept version of the A390, a coupe-crossover thing which definitely will be electric.

Neither of these cars, you’ll note, is particularly similar to the A110, and frankly, nothing else it ever makes will be. With production soon to be limited to exempt it from compliance with the latest European GSR2 safety rules, and set to wind up altogether in 2026, it’s likely to remain the reborn performance brand’s sole mass-produced internal combustion car. We’ll never forget it, and we reckon there’s no better time than now to see for yourself what a special thing it is.