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AlpineAlpine was a French manufacturer of racing and sports cars which used rear mounted Renault engines.
Jean Redele, the founder of Alpine, was originally a Dieppe garage proprietor who began to achieve considerable competition success in one of the few French cars produced just after World War 2. The proper pronunciation is closer to "al-peen".
Using Renault 4CVs, he gained class wins in a number of major events, including the Mille Miglia and Coupe des Alpes. As his experience with the little 4CV built up, he incorporated many modifications, including for example, special 5 speed gear boxes replacing the original 3 speed unit. To provide a lighter car he built a number of special versions with lightweight aluminium bodies: he drove in these at Le Mans and Sebring with some success in the early 50s.
Encouraged by the development of these cars and consequent customer demand, he founded the Societe Anonyme des Automobiles Alpine in 1954. The firm was named Alpine after his Coupe des Alpes successes but in those days, La Manche was very wide! Alpine did not realise that over in England the previous year, Sunbeam had introduced a sports coupe derived from the Sunbeam Talbot and called the Sunbeam Alpine. This naming problem was to cause problems for Alpine throughout its history!
In 1955, he worked with the Chappe brothers to be amongst the pioneers of auto glass fibre construction and produced a small coupe, based on 4CV mechanicals and called the A106. It used the platform chassis of the original Renault 4CV. The A106 achieved a number of successes through the 1950s and was joined by a low and stylish cabriolet. Styling for this car was contracted to the Italian designer Michelotti. Under the glassfibre body was a very stiff chassis based on a central tubular backbone which was to be the hallmark of all Alpines built. Alpine then took the Michelotti cabriolet design and developed a 2+2 closed coupe (or 'berlinette') body for it: this became the A108, built between 1958 and 1963
By now the car's mechanicals were beginning to show their age. Alpine were already working closely with Renault and when the Renault R8 saloon was introduced in 1962, Alpine redeveloped their chassis and made a number of minor body changes to allow the use of R8 mechanicals.
This new car was the A110 Berlinette Tour de France, named after a successful run with the A108 in the 1962 event. Starting with a 956cc engine of 51bhp, the same chassis and body developed with relatively minor changes over the years to the stage where, by 1974, the little car was handling 1800cc engines developing 180bhp+: with a competition weight for the car of around (620Kg), performance was very high!
Alpine achieved increasing success in rallying and by 1968, had been allocated the whole Renault competition budget. The close collaboration allowed Alpines to be sold and maintained in France by normal Renault dealerships. Real top level success started in 1968 with outright wins in the Coupe des Alpes and other international events. By this time the competition cars were fitted with 1440cc engines derived from the Renault R8 Gordini. Competition successes became numerous, helped since Alpine were the first company fully to exploit the competition parts homologation rules.
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