My New Alpine a110 premiere edition......

[bcr5784]

Prestonese said:

Surely, that depends on which country you live in?

Suspect it depends more if you can speak French with no accent.....

[SFO]

has anyone bought a non premiere edition A110?

[K800 RUM]

I very much like the new A110. I have had a caterham for 12 years now that I built from a complete knock down kit. I still love that but if funds ever allow The Alpine is the only car I would swap it for.
Am I right in thinking there are only four colours available? Blue, Black, White & Grey. It would have to be blue if I had one or is that colour only available in the limited launch models?
Please keep posting pictures any owners out there!

[RedAMG45]

There is a dark blue as well that looks rather nice or you can go for the Alpine Blue but there will be fair few of them

[Brabbi]

SFO said:

has anyone bought a non premiere edition A110?

I picked up my A110 Pure in January, has been amazing so far.

There's currently 6 colours to choose from; 2 blues, 2 whites, 1 grey and 1 black. You can go on the french configurator and see the colour and wheel options. Don't think the UK one is working yet. I've heard that most of the cars have been ordered in the Alpine blue

[SFO]

Brabbi said:

I picked up my A110 Pure in January, has been amazing so far.

There's currently 6 colours to choose from; 2 blues, 2 whites, 1 grey and 1 black. You can go on the french configurator and see the colour and wheel options. Don't think the UK one is working yet. I've heard that most of the cars have been ordered in the Alpine blue

love the dark blue .. mine would be that and the chocolate leather plus Fuchs forged alloys

[Swervin_Mervin]

SFO said:

Brabbi said:

I picked up my A110 Pure in January, has been amazing so far.

There's currently 6 colours to choose from; 2 blues, 2 whites, 1 grey and 1 black. You can go on the french configurator and see the colour and wheel options. Don't think the UK one is working yet. I've heard that most of the cars have been ordered in the Alpine blue

love the dark blue .. mine would be that and the chocolate leather plus Fuchs forged alloys

I'm with you on all of that!

[blueg33]

Swervin_Mervin said:

SFO said:

Brabbi said:

I picked up my A110 Pure in January, has been amazing so far.

There's currently 6 colours to choose from; 2 blues, 2 whites, 1 grey and 1 black. You can go on the french configurator and see the colour and wheel options. Don't think the UK one is working yet. I've heard that most of the cars have been ordered in the Alpine blue

love the dark blue .. mine would be that and the chocolate leather plus Fuchs forged alloys

I'm with you on all of that!

I hated the dark blue. In the flesh it didn't suit the car IMO, it looks flat and dull. Reminded me of the cheap option dark blue Ford Sierra's used to come in.

[Swervin_Mervin]

Bugger

I need to see some at some point. Only seen the Alpine Bleu and I wasn't overly fussed.

[rick.e]

SFO said:

has anyone bought a non premiere edition A110?

Me. 14 month wait, and I received my car 6 weeks ago. Love it to bits.

[rick.e]

blueg33 said:

Swervin_Mervin said:

SFO said:

Brabbi said:

I picked up my A110 Pure in January, has been amazing so far.

There's currently 6 colours to choose from; 2 blues, 2 whites, 1 grey and 1 black. You can go on the french configurator and see the colour and wheel options. Don't think the UK one is working yet. I've heard that most of the cars have been ordered in the Alpine blue

love the dark blue .. mine would be that and the chocolate leather plus Fuchs forged alloys

I'm with you on all of that!

I hated the dark blue. In the flesh it didn't suit the car IMO, it looks flat and dull. Reminded me of the cheap option dark blue Ford Sierra's used to come in.

In the flesh, this car has a lot of subtle changes of body contour, which in some colours just disappear. To my eye, black is the worst, and I don't think many will be sold, nor was I keen on the pearlescent white one. In the sun, there is no doubt in my mind that the Alpine Blue stands out when side by side with the others. It is not just history that makes people pay the extra dosh for the blue. So as I live in the South of France, I went for it, but it was a close thing between Alpine Blue and the flat white as it will be a little rarer. If I lived in the UK I would probably have gone with the grey, as I always found grey sports cars (eg Astons), to suit UK climes. The dark blue? Just doesn't shout "look at me aren't I pretty" the way the Alpine Blue and the white do.

[K800 RUM]

This was originally a joint project with Caterham but they dropped out. Not for the first time caterham missed a trick there.

At the Caterham cars open day at their Crawly HQ on Easter Monday they had a full scale clay model of an Alpine A110 there, a sad reminder of what might have been.

The 7 will always be their core model. Does anyone remember the 21 that is 25 years old this year? It was a good looking car but only a handful sold, it was never going to be easy when it was up against the new to the market Lotus Elise, you couldn't even wind the windows down.

[bcr5784]

K800 RUM said:

This was originally a joint project with Caterham but they dropped out. Not for the first time caterham missed a trick there.

At the Caterham cars open day at their Crawly HQ on Easter Monday they had a full scale clay model of an Alpine A110 there, a sad reminder of what might have been.

The 7 will always be their core model. Does anyone remember the 21 that is 25 years old this year? It was a good looking car but only a handful sold, it was never going to be easy when it was up against the new to the market Lotus Elise, you couldn't even wind the windows down.

Oddly enough the Elise was originally intended as a modern 7 weighing 550kg and having no doors. I wonder how the 21 would have fared had the Elise remained faithful to its original design brief.

[K800 RUM]

I have still to see my first one in the metal. A friend of mine saw one at a Goodwood track day recently & said it looked & sounded great.

[rick.e]

K800 RUM said:

This was originally a joint project with Caterham but they dropped out. Not for the first time caterham missed a trick there.

Missed a trick? What an odd way of putting it. It was never going to happen for them. There was no way they were ever going to find the cash to fund their half of a modern factory capable of building 25 cars per day. Caterham ran out of money after only funding a polystyrene model! And even had they continued, all cars would have been French built in Dieppe.

Edited by rick.e on Wednesday 8th May 09:01

[K800 RUM]

Without a doubt all the cars would be French built even if caterham had kept an interest. You may remember they also lost a small fortune in F1.

[blueg33]

bcr5784 said:

K800 RUM said:

This was originally a joint project with Caterham but they dropped out. Not for the first time caterham missed a trick there.

At the Caterham cars open day at their Crawly HQ on Easter Monday they had a full scale clay model of an Alpine A110 there, a sad reminder of what might have been.

The 7 will always be their core model. Does anyone remember the 21 that is 25 years old this year? It was a good looking car but only a handful sold, it was never going to be easy when it was up against the new to the market Lotus Elise, you couldn't even wind the windows down.

Oddly enough the Elise was originally intended as a modern 7 weighing 550kg and having no doors. I wonder how the 21 would have fared had the Elise remained faithful to its original design brief.

In chassis design alone the Elise was miles ahead of the steel space frame of the 21. Plus the 21 always looked like a kit car, the Elise like a production car.

I do think Caterham should have stuck with the Alpine project and maybe left F1 alone.

Everyone knows that F1 isn’t really profitable for a small team, whereas building a bloody good modern sports car gives you a fighting chance.

[bcr5784]

blueg33 said:

In chassis design alone the Elise was miles ahead of the steel space frame of the 21. Plus the 21 always looked like a kit car, the Elise like a production car.

I do think Caterham should have stuck with the Alpine project and maybe left F1 alone.

I'm not convinced an Elise without doors would have buried the 21 as the final design did. The Elise was a great example of scope creep - originally intended to be profitable with a total production of 2500 units. The doors alone cost the project £500k. Of course, as it happens, the change of direction was a great decision - but it could have buried Lotus if the car had been a dog.

Re Caterham - it really depends on what the share of development costs was. Caterham would never have sold anything like the numbers that Renault could through adjuncts to its existing dealership. So if the share of development costs was any vaguely close to 50% Caterham would have been on a hiding to nothing , making their version far less profitably than Renault could.

[rick.e]

bcr5784 said:

Re Caterham - it really depends on what the share of development costs was. Caterham would never have sold anything like the numbers that Renault could through adjuncts to its existing dealership. So if the share of development costs was any vaguely close to 50% Caterham would have been on a hiding to nothing , making their version far less profitably than Renault could.

According to information released (eg see the TG interview with the Caterham Commercial Director, David Ridley) the project was based on a 50/50 split, each company to sell 3,000 cars per year, and a 50/50 split of the 150M euro investment. As I said, it was never going to work for a company the size Caterham, either from an investment prospect or in terms of sales channels.

(I would also presume that the overall financial return to Renault would be higher than to Caterham, as Alpine/Caterham were to buy major components from Renault.)

[framerateuk]

rick.e said:

According to information released (eg see the TG interview with the Caterham Commercial Director, David Ridley) the project was based on a 50/50 split, each company to sell 3,000 cars per year, and a 50/50 split of the 150M euro investment. As I said, it was never going to work for a company the size Caterham, either from an investment prospect or in terms of sales channels.

(I would also presume that the overall financial return to Renault would be higher than to Caterham, as Alpine/Caterham were to buy major components from Renault.)

Caterham also have no experience in that volume of production or type approval. It would have been too much of a step up from their current business model.

It could also have been a catastrophic failure for them if the car didn't turn as good as expected. Renault can absorb those sorts of figures while it could well have ended up with Caterham closing their doors.

I think it was probably the right choice.