Alpine A110 R Ultime

The A110 is going out with a 340bhp bang in the shape of the highly tuned, hardcore R Ultime. Unsurprisingly, the ultimate A110 looks right at home on the track, but how does it perform on the road? We find out

- by HENRY CATCHPOLE PHOTOGRAPHY by THOMAS CORTESI for ALPINE

OH, WOW. IT JUST FEELS SO... RIGHT. Within a couple of corners it's flowing and harmonious, the responses precise and the balance malleable. That sense of almost floating down the road, maintaining momentum and picking whatever line you choose through a sequence of bends. It may be a year since I last drove an A110 R, but such is the instant rapport, the re-found familiarity, that it's like coming home, patting the Labrador and settling down in your favourite chair to some warm toast and butter with an old episode of Rally Report. All the reasons that it took the silver medal in eCoty 2023 are coming flooding back through the steering wheel.

All of which makes me think it might have been a mistake for Alpine to provide one for reference for our first drive of the A110 R Ultime (a final pre-production prototype example). As the name suggests, this version of the A110 is both the final iteration and the most extreme development of the core concept. If you were to compare the two lines of The Knowledge at the back of this magazine, then the story would be as follows: 340bhp and 310lb ft of torque, meaning useful hikes of 44bhp and 59lb ft respectively over the R. You'd also notice that the 0-62mph time has dropped by just a tenth to 3.8 seconds and the top speed has remained the same at 177mph. And then you'd pick your jaw off the floor after reading that each Ultime costs from €265,000 (c£230k), or about €150,000 more than an R.