Alpine A110 owners
Discussion
Well, in the interest of science I did persevere well beyond 200 km/h to see if it would somehow settle back into a more happy place, but no such luck. I will admit it was much a more white-knuckled experience than I had anticipated and I picked my spot to do this more carefully than I have done in other cars.
I'll first have a look a the geo, and see if that improves things (although it may be months and months before the opportunity arises), but my hopes now been dashed a bit
. I'm not sure I'm willing to contemplate splitters and wings just yet. One of the things I appreciate about the A110 is how clean and elegant it is, as opposed to the savagely bevented, bewinged and besplittered 'usual suspects' from Germany, and realistically I don't do a lot of this kind f driving.
I'll first have a look a the geo, and see if that improves things (although it may be months and months before the opportunity arises), but my hopes now been dashed a bit
. I'm not sure I'm willing to contemplate splitters and wings just yet. One of the things I appreciate about the A110 is how clean and elegant it is, as opposed to the savagely bevented, bewinged and besplittered 'usual suspects' from Germany, and realistically I don't do a lot of this kind f driving. In relation to the high-speed stability of the A110, I recently returned from an European road trip which included some driving on German autobahns. This was the fourth year in-a-row when I've been driving my A110 in Germany and the highest indicated speed I've driven with it has been 250 km/h.
My personal experience is that A110 is definitely not the most stable car on high speeds which I think is expected on a light, short wheelbase car with most of the weight in the back. What I haven't noticed however is that there would be some threshold where the car would suddenly become more unstable. My experience is that the unstable behavior increases gradually with speed. Here in Finland the highest speed limits on the motorways are 120 km/h and already at those speeds I can feel the the car is not most stable especially if the conditions are windy. At 170 km/h it naturally feels more unstable than at 120 km/h and when speeds are at around 200 km/h or over the car does feel very nervous.
Definitely not a great car for extended high-speed runs on autobahn.
My A110 is the base model with no modifications whatsoever.
My personal experience is that A110 is definitely not the most stable car on high speeds which I think is expected on a light, short wheelbase car with most of the weight in the back. What I haven't noticed however is that there would be some threshold where the car would suddenly become more unstable. My experience is that the unstable behavior increases gradually with speed. Here in Finland the highest speed limits on the motorways are 120 km/h and already at those speeds I can feel the the car is not most stable especially if the conditions are windy. At 170 km/h it naturally feels more unstable than at 120 km/h and when speeds are at around 200 km/h or over the car does feel very nervous.
Definitely not a great car for extended high-speed runs on autobahn.
My A110 is the base model with no modifications whatsoever.
I'm not speeding with my GT and and on a windy day I was overtaking a truck probably with 120-130kph. Right after I passed the tuck I was hit by wind. I'd say it was a bit scary. Because I wasn't expecting the car to behave like that. I always keep both hand on the wheel and I kept the control. Ever since that moment I'm considering a switch to GTS but can't justify the price. I like the options from R fitted into the GTS, like the aerokit and Akapovic bits. But with all those it is becoming too pricy.
Olivera said:
I recall amending the geometry could improve higher speed stability?
I'm sure it does. I had mine done to the Life110 fast road geo (mine's a totally standard car on 17inch wheels) and it is definitely more planted now, but, I'd also say its lost a touch of the tippy toed playfulness it had on the standard geo which I can well imagine would make it more lively at high speed. Olivera said:
I recall amending the geometry could improve higher speed stability?
It does, a bit. I have driven mine on the autobahn both before and after. It helps to a degree, but it can't mask how wind, turbulence and other environmental factors impact what is a small lightweight sports car. Fundamentally I don't think it's a very good high-speed, straight line car, but that's not why I bought it. It's fine at UK motorway speeds, if I lived and commuted in Germany, it wouldn't be my first choice of daily driver.
Like another poster has mentioned, I think aero will help, but it'll also ruin the looks. For me at the moment it's a bit of a non-problem though, just an observation.
Yesterday, I drove back home and gave it another few tries. Thankfully I encountered both completely calm and more windy/gusty conditions so I could do some apples-to-apples comparing. Clearly, crosswinds are a big factor in the (perceived) high speed stability. I wouldn't go so far as to all the car unstable at high speeds, but I will still call it busy and excitable. Not so much of an issue as an observation indeed, as the flip side is that wonderful agility for which I bought it in the first place - I can always go out and buy me an Audi of some sort if I were suddenly overcome with the irrepressible need for unflappable high-speed straight line stability.
corrieb74 said:
You re correct. There are no Alpines in the US. I shipped mine from France a month ago and I m doing a road trip across the country attending various car events. It s been an epic trip. To say the car had been getting attention would be an understatement 
Have a 
Fantastic work!corrieb74 said:
You re correct. There are no Alpines in the US. I shipped mine from France a month ago and I m doing a road trip across the country attending various car events. It s been an epic trip. To say the car had been getting attention would be an understatement
All credit to you sir! A geo will correct the high speed instability they add toe to the front... Not ideal though as it robs the car of steering feel.
I run parallel toe on my Alpine this is the "correct" way to do it Porsche and Lotus cars run parallel toe so it's only having to mask the lack of down force/soft springs combo. My car has the best steering feel of any of the 5/6 alpines we've had so far. I don't have any aero as yet although we are currently making a splitter and side skirts plus a rear wing but I found that running my Nitrons stiffer totally cured the wavering at high speeds I had before and with the parallel toe. Having had the car on track you can really feel the lack of aero and funnily enough the crosswinds were very noticeable as the previous poster noted. The aero will make a massive difference we did the same prices on my old VX220 track car which has even worse characteristics. I'm sure a few people on here will have experienced those cars trying to take off at 110mph! We cured that completely with basic aero.
I run parallel toe on my Alpine this is the "correct" way to do it Porsche and Lotus cars run parallel toe so it's only having to mask the lack of down force/soft springs combo. My car has the best steering feel of any of the 5/6 alpines we've had so far. I don't have any aero as yet although we are currently making a splitter and side skirts plus a rear wing but I found that running my Nitrons stiffer totally cured the wavering at high speeds I had before and with the parallel toe. Having had the car on track you can really feel the lack of aero and funnily enough the crosswinds were very noticeable as the previous poster noted. The aero will make a massive difference we did the same prices on my old VX220 track car which has even worse characteristics. I'm sure a few people on here will have experienced those cars trying to take off at 110mph! We cured that completely with basic aero.
Juffled said:
On a sidenote, where do you get these images from? Is there a workshop manual available for purchase, or download etc, would be quite useful as I do most of the work on my car myself.
I think it was on the French FAR forum https://forum.alpinerenault.com/Hi,
A few times while driving, the centre screen has gone blank, switched itself off then come back on 5 secs later. Guessing rebooted itself for some reason.
Spoken to the dealer and they've told me there is a software update but because I'm out of warranty, will be £300 to install. Any ideas what the update covers? No idea if this will resolve the issue. Seems a lot of money for what it is.
My car is a 2021 Legende GT.
A few times while driving, the centre screen has gone blank, switched itself off then come back on 5 secs later. Guessing rebooted itself for some reason.
Spoken to the dealer and they've told me there is a software update but because I'm out of warranty, will be £300 to install. Any ideas what the update covers? No idea if this will resolve the issue. Seems a lot of money for what it is.
My car is a 2021 Legende GT.
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