How good does Alpine Lacoste A290 Rallye look?
Frenchiest thing ever the result of 'creative dialogue' between design teams
Some things just go well together. Beer and crisps. Chicken and gravy. Fish and chips. The new Alpine Lacoste A290 Rally is a fine example of an admirable non-food-based combination. Despite sharing many of the same values and customers, collaborations between fashion brands and carmakers are not always worth shouting about (Mini’s recent association with Paul Smith was about as interesting as wet flour), but when they look as fetching as a pumped-up A290 in white, we’re willing to make an exception.
Like putting a Lacoste polo shirt on Pierre Gasly (the Alpine F1 driver who is also, not coincidentally, a brand ambassador), it helps to have the right underpinnings in place. We discussed the A290 Rallye when it appeared last year, a car ostensibly aimed at customer racing, though it serves just as well as a direction finder for a more extreme vision of the electric hot hatch. Because while it has the same (relatively modest) output of the road-going GTS, it also boasts a proper limited-slip front diff, trick suspension and wider tracks - and, as the accompanying video proves, a hydraulic handbrake.
From the outside, Alpine says you’re looking at a ‘genuine rally car, reimagined through Lacoste's stylistic lens’ - though clearly it’s inside where the clothing brand has made its input felt. From the snowy mise-en-scène on the exterior, you step into a ‘monochrome red world — as if the driver were literally stepping into the crocodile's mouth’. Job jobbed in that sense, though there are also details galore, from Lacoste's ‘emblematic’ petit piqué fabric on the seats and door panels, to the actual crocodile moulded onto the rear parcel shelf (which doubles as a spoiler).
Of course, the wider point of the one-off show car is to promote some stuff you can actually buy - think ‘capsule collection’ featuring co-branded t-shirts and the like - although we’d like to think that it’s also indicative of Alpine’s ongoing thought process when it comes to its smallest EV; i.e. that the gap between vaguely quick supermini and the six-figure, mentalist Renault 5 Turbo 3E would be easily exploited by a stripped-out, Rally-inspired A290 with more power and a take-no-prisoners attitude. Subtract some crocodiles from the Lacoste, and it’s halfway there…
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