Alpine A110 review: Price, MPG and boot space

Alpine A110: everything you need to know 

Renault revived the sporting Alpine brand in 2017, dusting off a model badge last tacked to the back of a car in 1977. It then had its designers create a modern interpretation of the car that wore it, trawled its history books for evocative, bygone motorsport successes – a win in the 1971 Monte Carlo Rally and overall title win in the ’73 world rally championship, no less – and set about building a new sports car.

The automotive world, or at least the enthusiast portion of it, was in rapture. With its emphasis on low mass, fine balance and purity of response, the Alpine A110 is the lightweight foil to its bloated, overpowered sports car contemporaries. 

The result is, and remains, impressive. The lightest A110 is just 1098kg, making it an absolute featherweight among its sports car rivals, while the history of the original car to wear the name gives the new A110 an admirable back story. 

Being so light, the A110 doesn't really need to be that powerful. All use a 1.8-litre four-cylinder turbo engine shared with various Renault models, including the Renault Sport Megane and, erm, the previous-generation Espace. The base version makes all of 252PS, but it's still reasonably quick. 

The GTS (previously called 'S') bumps this up to 300PS while coming with a firmer 'Cup' chassis, and above that is the A110 R, which comes with even more focused suspension, various weight reduction measures and some aerodynamic appendages. Really, though, it's the most basic one that you want. 

How we tested the Alpine A110

We've tested various versions of the Alpine A110 on a variety of roads in the UK and abroad, and several occasions on track. And on the whole, we've loved our time spent with the car, and come away preferring the entry-level version of the car, simply called A110, and for a little while, A110 Pure. 

As impressive as the more focused versions of the car, like the GTS, can be on the right road (or track), it's the boggo A110 that does the best job of setting the model apart from other sports cars. That's its supple suspension setup, which makes the A110 the ideal sports car for Britain's crumbling A-roads. 

That's not to say it's soft and wallowy. Far from it. The A110 laps up fast corners, feeling stable yet chuckable, helped by how light the car is compared to things like the Porsche 718 Cayman. And although its 1.8-litre, Renault-borrowed engine might not sound too special on paper, it works really well in the A110. It's even quite economical.

You'd probably be happy daily driving an A110 (we hear of plenty of people who do), so it seems a shame that the A110 is so poor in terms of practicality. Sure, you're not expecting it to be massively usable, but we've long been frustrated by the Alpine's lack of interior storage and absence of cupholders. The interior tech and switchgear are pretty low-rent in places, too, and were starting to look especially dated towards the end of the car's life.

Is the Alpine A110 a good car?

The A110 is an excellent car and one of the best sports cars of recent times. It's great to drive, and makes brilliant use of a Renault four-cylinder engine, which you simply wouldn't expect to be as exciting as Alpine manages to make it. The pure joy of driving and A110 means we're happier to overlook its practicality compromises and some of the naffer elements of the interior. 

Whether it’s the poor quality of French roads, or the possibility that all French chassis engineers were all brought home from the maternity units via ploughed fields in fine-riding 2CVs, there’s no denying the extraordinarily fine balance of ride and handling that Alpine has achieved with the A110.

It’s taut and controlled, yet supple, its light weight allowing the chassis to be tuned magnificently, with feel and finesse that shows up all but of handful of its rivals as brittle, poor-riding, inaccurate and lacking in feel.

It’s that feel, through the light, accurate steering, the way the car seems to pivot under you in the centre, and the ability all that affords you to enjoy the engine’s performance via the chassis that makes the A110 so appealing to those people who actually relish driving. 

The range-topping A110 GTS (a replacement for the earlier S) actually removes a bit of that, as with its additional power comes more rubber on the road to heighten the grip levels, while a slight drop in the suspension height and stiffening up of the anti-roll bars does remove some of the lower-powered car’s beautifully balanced, poised set-up, and hence appeal, behind the wheel.   

The A110 R goes further still, with a lower, stiffer setup, pushing it even further away from the ethos of the original. It'll be the best A110 to drive on track, though, if that's your sort of thing.

Being so lightweight means Alpine can be modest with its power output, so the standard A110 makes do with 252PS. A more powerful S model later upped that to 292PS, and then 300PS, before being replaced by the GTS, which remained on sale until the car went out of production, along with an R featuring the same power output but a more sprightly 0-62mph time thanks to a reduction in weight. For a while, you could also buy the Legende GT, which combined the more powerful engine with the softer standard suspension setup. 

In all models, power is produced by a 1.8-litre four-cylinder turbocharged engine, which also sees service in Renault’s more powerful Renaultsport Clios and Meganes. And also some less exotic cars, including the previous-generation Espace. 

There’s nothing wrong with that, though, as sports cars more often than not borrow engines from humbler, bigger volume models, and the performance the Alpine A110 delivers is impressive enough with a 0-62mph time of 4.5 seconds (4.2 in the GTS, 3.9 in the R), both quicker than a Porsche Cayman S here. 

There’s plenty of low-rev response, too, and Alpine have made it sound fantastic, with plenty of drama, particularly with the optional sports exhaust.

Alpine, sadly, but quite justifiably, cites tiny likely sales volumes and the expense of developing a manual transmission as preventing them offering a manual gearbox, however much it would certainly add to the driving experience.

The dual-clutch automatic gearbox works well, at least, with quick shifts accompanied by a satisfying 'pop' from the exhaust. It's a shame that even in the manual mode, the system changes up for you at the top end, rather than letting you run into the rev limiter. 

Renault, and by extension, Alpine, has a commendable safety record. The A110’s nature and small volume mean it was never independently crash tested by organisations like Euro NCAP. There's nothing unusual about it – the safety body never assessed the Porsche 718 Cayman, either.

There’s no Isofix option on the passenger seat, though, should you be doing the pre-school run in it. Its structure might be light, but it’s stiff and strong, while the agility it has might just help you avoid an accident in the first place.

Tiny as the boots capacities are, you’ll not be able to stick a trailer behind it for your luggage, even if you wanted to. Borrow a friend’s car if you need anything towing…

If that overall rating above were to be weighted heavily in relation to practicality then the Alpine A110 would struggle to achieve anything like how we’ve scored it.

It’s a two-seat, mid-engined, driver-focused sports car, so people buying it will do so with the expectation of some compromises in practicality here. Forget collecting Billy bookcases in it from IKEA, then, even if being mid-engined means two boots, a shallow 96 litre one up front – about the height of a decent paperback deep, as it happens – and a more conventional 100 litre boot in the rear.

That front one will take a squashy sports bag or two, or a carry-on suitcase. The rear a similar amount, though the back boot’s access is hampered by the narrow opening. Stowage space inside is absolutely non-existent, with no door bins or even a glovebox. 

You don't even get a cupholder. If these sound like things you shouldn't be moaning about when assessing a thoroughbred sports car, we'd like to point out firstly that you do still get a glovebox, door pockets and cupholder in a Porsche 718 Cayman, and that plenty of people still do daily drive the A110, so a smidge more impracticality wouldn't go amiss. 

Alpine will lighten your wallet by £470 for a hopeless ‘cargo net and storage case’ for the interior. Don’t bother, just travel light, or wear some cargo pants (actually, please don’t).

Alpine A110 dimensions

The Alpine A110's exterior dimensions make it 4181mm long, 1798mm wide and 1248mm tall. Aside from the tiny Mazda MX-5 everyday sports cars don't get much smaller than this. 

The lack of practicality we can sort of forgive given its focus, though not if it actually results in you buying cargo pants. Where the A110 falls down significantly is in the finish inside.

For a car starting at over £55,000 and going to over £100,000 it’s just not good enough. We get the lightweight mantra, understand a bit of parts sharing, but while some elements of the A110’s interior delight – the seating position, some evidence of carbon fibre and aluminium – the rest of it is more than a little bit disappointing. 

Given it’s a car that can list something like the Audi TT as a rival, or a Porsche Cayman, we reckon that most buyers might have conceded an increase in the kerbweight for more substantial, quality-feeling plastics around the cabin. 

Like those plastics, the infotainment is lifted directly from Renault’s parts shelves in France, and, again, it’s merde.

 The central seven-inch touch screen comes with Android Auto and Apple CarPlay (which requires plugging the phone in – it's not a wireless setup), as well as GPS and European mapping, but it’s a bit fiddly and frustratingly slow in its operation. There’s USB and Bluetooth connectivity and a standard audio system, with the option of lightweight or premium audio systems, depending on which A110.

You should be having too much fun driving it to worry about the poor infotainment interface, which is just as well, as even changing something as simple as the volume is problematic. 

These are the latest On The Road (OTR) prices for the remaining new Alpine A110 stock as of April 2026.

Is the Alpine A110 good value compared to rivals? 

Towards the end of its life, the A110 didn't really have many rivals. Lotus hasn't been selling any of its four-cylinder sports cars for years, and the Alpine has (just) outlived the Porsche 718 Cayman. The last time both were on sale at the same time, the Cayman slightly undercut the A110 in its most basic form, but it's hilariously easy to make a Porsche more expensive with a few options, a lot of which are things you might expect to be fitted as standard.

Granted, the A110 has plenty of available options as well, but are cosmetic. In terms of standard equipment, it has all the stuff you might need. Plus, we should point out that the 718 Cayman you really want, the GTS, was well over £70,000 before options. You could have the standard A110 for about £15,000 less and get a similar level of driving pleasure, or bag the GTS and still end up with something cheaper. 

For well over £100,000, the A110 R feels like a harder sell. That's Porsche 911 territory for something that's littered with old Renault bits inside, and in any case, the hardcore R feels like it's missing the point of what makes the standard, softer model so great. 

It's only a matter of time before the remaining new stock of A110s disappears. Soon, you'll have to go used, but don't go thinking that means a bargain is to be had. Last time we checked, it's still nearly £40,000 for the earliest, leggiest examples. On the flipside, that points to strong residual values, so you shouldn't lose too much money when it comes to selling one on.

With a small engine working not very hard to power it, the fuel economy is actually pretty decent, with most versions hovering around 40mpg based on the WLTP combined cycle. 

The reality will be a bit less, as it’s a car that begs to be driven pretty enthusiastically, but if you were to be mixing some mundane motoring with the fun, it’ll be surprisingly frugal. 

Along with the usual £200 a year for VED car tax, the A110's RRP is well beyond the £40,000 threshold for the government's expensive vehicle tax supplement, so you'll be stung an extra £425 annually from years two to six.

All will sit in group 44 and above for insurance, which is comparable to its rivals, so depending on your driving record, and where you live/park it, it’s not going to be punitively expensive. 

Servicing shouldn’t be too expensive, particularly given the majority of the parts are Renault sourced, and being light things like brakes and tyres should wear slower than its weightier rivals

The A110's range structure has shifted around over time. Originally, there was just the A110, which became the A110 Pure, sitting under the A110 Legende (later called GT) and the A110 S. There have been various special editions, including a Fernando Alonso Edition, awkwardly revealed after the F1 driver's somewhat acrimonious departure from the Alpine F1 team...

Towards the end of the car's life, the main versions were called A110, A110 GTS and A110 R. Along with equipment differences, each has a distinct technical setup. 

The Alpine A110 comes with the following equipment fitted as standard:

• 18-inch alloy wheels
• LED headlights
• Electrically adjustable and folding heated door mirrors
• Touchscreen infotainment system
• Cruise control Apple CarPlay/Android Auto Climate control

The Alpine A110 GTS builds on the above with more power, a stiffer 'Cup' chassis and the following equipment:

• 18-inch forged wheels
• Focal audio system
• Front/rear parking sensors
• Rear parking camera
• Heated front leather comfort seats

The main draw of the Alpine A110 R is its weight reduction measures, aerodynamic additions and track-focused chassis, but it does also include a small change in the GTS's equipment, comprising:

• 18-inch wheels (R-specific design)
• Microfibre Track seats with six-point harnesses 
• Microfibre interior trim