Alpine A110 R Review: Both The Best And The Worst A110

The modern-day Alpine A110 has always been a bit like one of those indie albums that’s massively popular with critics and geeks on music forums but often overlooked by the mainstream. While things like the A290 and the F1 team are efforts to make Alpine a bit more Top 40, the A110 is the car world’s ‘Loveless’ or ‘In the Aeroplane Over the Sea’.

And if the A110’s a critically adored alternative album, then the A110 R is the hypothetical unplugged version. It’s the lightest, most stripped-back version yet of a car whose USP is already its lightness and stripped-backness.

Other A110s strike a balance between weight-saving and usability; this one pursues the former at the cost of the latter. It has padded one-piece carbon bucket seats with six-point harnesses. It gets more aggressive aero and carbon fibre wheels. It has no rear windscreen at all, and the entire rear hatch has been replaced with a carbon cover. It’s unashamedly track-focused.

This risks compromising what makes lesser A110s so good. Their light touch makes them brilliantly entertaining and usable on broken B-roads, but they’re equally amenable to nipping to the shops or sitting on a motorway. Does the R treatment spoil these talents?

The R shares its 1.8-litre turbocharged four-cylinder – pinched from the old Renaultsport Megane – with the rest of the range. Here, it’s in 296bhp, 251lb ft guise, and remains hooked exclusively to a seven-speed dual-clutch gearbox. Because it’s so light, and because it has seven gears and a little four-pot engine, a quoted 41.5mpg isn’t a total pipe dream if you’re driving steadily. But you won’t be.

The liberal dosing of carbon fibre (in addition to the stuff outlined above, the bonnet’s made from it too) contributes to a 34kg saving over the A110 S. That’s significant when starting with a base car that’s already so lithe, and brings kerbweight down to 1082kg. 

The results of all this are 62mph in 3.9 seconds, and a top speed of 177mph, bringing the Alpine’s baby supercar vibes ever closer to the real deal.

The A110’s never been about raw numbers, though. Handling’s always been its thing, and in this department, the R is sensational. The springs have been stiffened by 10 per cent, and anti-roll bars by 10 per cent up front and 25 per cent out back. It sits 10mm lower than standard and can be manually dropped by a further 10mm.

These tweaks give it a noticeable cornering edge. The R stays unwaveringly flat through bends, and you can lean on enormous reserves of grip. It has an incredibly keen nose, and while there’s a hint of understeer dialled into the chassis, a mid-corner lift can bring the inherent mid-engined balance into play, tightening things up with a shimmy that’s exciting but never threatening.

The steering is an electronically assisted setup. It doesn’t chatter away relentlessly, but never once leaves you wanting more feedback. It’s perfectly weighted too, with just enough delicacy to play up the R’s lightness without it ever feeling like you’re not involved in the process.

It’s a massively enjoyable, confidence-inspiring thing to go hunt corners in, something amplified by the brilliant brakes. Its lightness means it doesn’t need enormous carbon-ceramic stoppers – it makes do with 320mm vented steel discs at both ends, which provide plenty of stopping power via a reassuringly firm pedal.

The one aspect of the A110 that’s never inspired quite the same reverence as the rest of the car is the powertrain. While most of its small pool of rivals still offer six cylinders and three pedals, the Alpine makes do with a turbo four and a dual-clutch gearbox.

It’s always been a good setup, and remains so here: its raspy tone and juvenile pop-pops are perfectly enjoyable, and it’s in keeping with the A110’s lightweight ethos. For the £94,990 being asked for the R, though, a powertrain that errs more towards function than emotion might be a harder sell.

The dual-clutch gearbox, though, is excellent – extremely responsive and slick in its shifts, with a slight but reassuring upshift jolt when you’re pushing on. There will always be those who deride the A110 for not offering a manual, but the lack of a clutch pedal really doesn’t detract that much from the experience.

Inside, the R isn’t too different from other A110s beyond the racy seats and lack of a rear-view mirror (there is a backup camera). It still has all the toys you could really want in a car like this – cruise control, air conditioning, and a dinky seven-inch screen. That houses a fairly naff infotainment system that you’ll immediately ignore and use CarPlay instead.

Some of the materials here don’t befit a £95k car, but the bits that are integral to the drive – the perfectly sized, Alcantara-covered steering wheel, the aluminium shift paddles – have been carefully considered.

All of this makes the A110 R genuinely usable as a road car. There are compromises: the restrictive harnesses and lack of rear screen make pulling out of parallel parking spaces or oblique junctions rather nerve-wracking. There’s a lot of tyre roar over poor surfaces, its racy suspension setup means it gets fidgety through ruts, and the harness’s buckle will dig into your unmentionables after a while.

But the seats are well-padded and comfy, and the engine’s unobtrusive at a cruise. The ride, although noticeably firmer than standard, never gets truly crashy. The R even retains both of the A110’s modest luggage compartments.

The thing is, though, every other version of the A110 is a truly superb road car. They’re 95 per cent as fun to drive and don’t require you to strap yourself into something that looks like it belongs in a backstreet establishment in Amsterdam or cross your fingers every time you pull out into traffic.

That leaves the R as something to consider mainly as a track toy and freed from the bounds of traffic laws, the emotional shortcomings of its powertrain might turn a few more people off.

Make no mistake, it’s still a superbly entertaining road car, and I’m glad beyond belief that it exists. Maybe, to drag out that tortured analogy from the beginning, it’s more like a live album. It’s raw, authentic and exciting, but unless you’re there, in the moment, it’s not quite as polished as the full studio version. As a result, it’s really for the most die-hard fans of the band.