The Renault Mégane Sport and Alpine A110
Earlier this year, the Renault Group unveiled a new strategic plan called the ‘Renaulution’ aimed at sparking the carmaker’s recovery and securing future growth. This includes 24 new vehicles by 2025 with a major expansion in their electric vehicle offering, adding to Dacia’s budget line-up and reinventing Alpine as the company’s electric performance brand. The question is: how exactly is the Renault Group going to do this successfully?
The Future Of The Alpine Marque
Whether you are an avid Formula One supporter or like following the latest automotive news, you may have seen our article about Renault rebranding to Alpine F1. It mentions the wholesale changes in key personnel since Luca De Meo took over as the new CEO with plans to elevate their Alpine sports car brand, which is known as a “symbol of French excellence”.
There’s good reason for that as Renault acquired Alpine in 1970 and has done some tremendous work, almost single-handedly revolutionising F1 technology with turbochargers. With such a rich history, chief executive, Laurent Rossi, certainly has a vital role to play in keeping the brand at the top of its game. Reporting directly to de Meo, he is not only responsible for motorsport but also cars for the new era.
With such a strong team behind him, it seems clear de Meo has a plan to turn the Alpine marque into a much bigger project than the Cupra division he had once led so successfully within SEAT and The Volkswagen Group. We could be in for an exciting ride with many new vehicles forming part of the new Alpine product plan which we’ve summarised in the next section.
Building On The Alpine Product Plan
In January, Group Lotus and the Renault Group officially signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to identify areas that require some cooperation and this includes developing an electric sports car. This is an exciting prospect especially considering such a car would be based on the Lotus platform. And, with everything that has already been achieved in the EV market, it could be a replacement for the Alpine A110.
This new car is one of three planned models confirmed for Alpine as part of the evolution in becoming an electric-only premium brand with a focus on ‘avant-garde’ models. So, to summarise, the three cars in the Alpine product plan are as follows:
- Fully-electric replacement of the A110 developed alongside Lotus
- Electric B-segment hot hatchback based on the Alliance CMF-B EV platform
- Electric C-segment sports crossover based on the Alliance CMF-EV platform
According to reports, the hot hatchback could be about four metres long and share a lot with the Renault 5. That means rear-wheel drive, a single motor but with higher power and torque output along with a potentially new battery pack offering extended range. In terms of launch dates, nothing has been confirmed but it could be toward the end of 2023.
Renault hasn’t released any information about the sports crossover either but based on other developments, we can work out a few of the details. With Renault launching several electric SUVs in the next year or two, it’s safe to assume that one of these could be Alpine’s successor for today’s Renault Mégane Sport.
Anything is possible as many brands have proven and that includes creating crossovers and SUVs in the B, C and larger segments. If Alpine uses the right platform, styling, stance, features and high-quality interior, they could make a properly good fully-electric SUV on a CMF-EV platform with two motors and AWD.
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