At Alpine, the message is clear: ‘Going electric is not a question, it’s a necessity.’ The sports car brand is taking advantage of its 70th anniversary celebrations to unveil the second 100% electric model in its Dream Garage series, which will feature seven models in total. It is the Sport Fastback A390, a crossover that was largely previewed by the A390-B concept car unveiled at the 2024 Paris Motor Show. LIGNES/auto takes a closer look at this new model, but first, the author must confess…
I’ll be honest with you: I feel uncomfortable talking about the new Alpine A390. It’s not about the product (I’m clarifying this before the communication team has a heart attack), but my personal experience. No one’s interested, but here goes: I’m the youngest of five children – very common in the 1960s – and I didn’t go on holiday very often because my father’s Renault wasn’t yet “a car for living”. At least, not for several people. There wasn’t room for me. So it was off to my grandmother’s for endless games of Mah Jong.
I couldn’t care less, because I knew that my father’s best friend would be accompanying us in his Berlinette A 110, the family R10, on the way back from holiday. The man known as Gilbert arrived well before my father, at the wheel of his yellow Alpine. That’s what holidays meant to me: being punished because of a Renault with the interior space of a matchbox, but rewarded with a ride in a Berlinette… And that little trip in the A110 took place on the roads that would later become those of the “Rallye de la Châtaigne”, near Autun in France.
A rally that was part of the French championship, and even the European championship in 1977, with Guy Fréquelin winning in an Alpine A310, pictured below. I was just a kid at the time, and an Alpine was as magical as it was scary to me, with a particularly oppressive fragrance and that intoxicating smell of glue. For me, Alpine has remained a brand that is totally incompatible with family life. A car that stank inside, a car for selfish people, but an unforgettable car.
When I became a journalist, and stood before the bible during the objectivity ceremony, I raised my right hand and said, ‘I swear,’ taking care not to mention that I was agnostic. So a little excursion into bias today isn’t going to send me to hell. And who knows, maybe the devil drives a red Alpine, like the Alpine A110 R 70 available in this colour below?
Today is a big day: the words ‘family’ and ‘Alpine’ are now compatible and for that reason alone, I LOVE the A390 below. There, I’ve just alienated half of the brand’s enthusiasts. I accept that. As Yves Montand sang, ‘There are those who dream with their eyes open and those who live with their eyes closed.’ I live with my eyes open, in tune with the times.
And I am basing this on official statements, such as the one below by Antony Villain, the brand’s design director, who announced that the future A110 is already in the pipeline and that the brand is an integral part of the Renault group’s strategy. The Alpine design team has grown from around ten people when the brand was relaunched in 2017 to around fifty today! The French manufacturer has no intention of running Alpine as the management did in the 1990s: by abandoning it.
The brand’s current boss, Philippe Krief, is not shy about sharing details on the brand’s future: ‘Our three main challenges are to launch a range of seven products over the next seven years. We want to show that we can do even better with 100% electric vehicles.’ The second challenge, and not the least, is to “develop a distribution network. Today, 70% of our sales are in France, and our ambition is that by 2030, more than half will be outside France, in Asia and the United States.” The third challenge is to firmly establish the fledgling brand by developing its desirability outside France in the premium segment, particularly through sport, namely Formula 1 and endurance racing.
Philippe Krief adds, “The A390 is our second Dream Garage vehicle that aims to conquer a new market, as it is a Sport Fastback. It’s a race car in a tuxedo. This year we are celebrating the brand’s 70th anniversary, but Alpine is fully focused on the next seven years. They will enable us to position Alpine among the elite automotive brands and make Alpine the French star in this field.“
The Alpine A390 is therefore the brand’s first crossover model with four doors (five with the tailgate) and five seats (the five-door A290 is directly derived from the R5 E-TECH), meaning there are three seats in the rear of this premium crossover, pictured above. With it, I could have gone on holiday and arrived much faster at the beaches that fascinated the kid I was, far from the seas and oceans. With it, I wouldn’t have got any better at Mah Jong, but I could have shared more moments with my sister and brothers.
When the A390 hits the market in 2025, all this will be possible, and I envy the children of the future owners of this first crossover from the brand. It would make sense for buyers of this model to have a family mindset, otherwise what would be the point of getting into a five-seater? And speaking of space, Alpine is about to enter a completely new market in an attempt to consolidate its position. The sales network will need to be as solid as Alpine promises with its A390.
In the middle of the month, we published an article attempting to explain that the crossover DNA was not entirely absent from the Dieppe-based brand, above (read it again here https://lignesauto.fr/?p=40464). Without the A290 and A390, therebe any future A110, A110 Roadster or A310 models in the pipeline. Let’s not beat around the bush: either you change your mindset and accept what you thought was unacceptable, or you remain in the wonderful world of yes-men where an Alpine A110 on its own would have no chance of survival anyway.
The A390 will be assembled at the historic Dieppe site. It is undoubtedly the product best suited to the brand’s ambitions. Ambitions that go far beyond mere survival. Don’t forget that just thirty years ago, Alpine ceased to exist due to a lack of convincing renewal. A few days ago, the manufacturer stated that “when designing the A390, the objectives that guided Alpine’s engineers were clear: to give the future A390, a 5-seat fastback sports car, the agility and driving pleasure of the legendary A110 (above). It incorporates all of Alpine’s dynamic DNA, with performance at the highest level of the brand’s models while offering the space of a true 5-seater.”
With its sophisticated torque vectoring system, which makes driving it as fun as driving an A110 – I’ll wait for my colleagues who are more comfortable behind the wheel to confirm this – the A390 is no clumsy crossover. In terms of weight, with a minimum of 2,121 kg, it’s light years away from the 635 kg of an A110 1600 (forgive us, Mr Rédélé, the electric fairy can sometimes be a heavy elf), but this figure remains ‘consistent’ with the competition… For example, the Porsche Macan above weighs 2,220 kg in its 100% EV version.
However, this figure works in favour of the French car, as the Alpine has four-wheel drive, whereas the Macan 4 with all-wheel drive weighs in at 2,330 kg. Admittedly, the Porsche is more generously proportioned at 4.78 m in length compared to the Alpine’s 4.61 m.
Porsche: the name has been revealed! Older readers may remember the cover of L’Auto-Journal from 11 March 1971 above, which featured the A310 alongside Jean Rédélé with the ambitious headline: ‘Monsieur Alpine attacks Porsche with the new A310.’ So here we go again: 54 years later, the rivals are back, and this time we hope the French will come out on top! Those who haven’t changed their software yet will contradict me by pointing out that the Macan also comes in a combustion engine version, which won’t be the case for the A390…
In terms of design, the Macan and A390 were not born in the same universe. Porsche needs to innovate without weakening the current combustion engine generation, hence a new Macan that is very… Macan, while Alpine is starting from scratch, with the Alpenglow above clearly visible, and not just in the signature lighting. In terms of basic concept, it’s clear that the aesthetic theme of the A110 is revealed in the treatment of the rear panels and the ‘bubble’ of the tailgate. There are probably too many door handles for die-hard fans of the brand, but you have to open those doors somehow, don’t you?
They open the door to an interior that will give “platists” something to grind their teeth about. The Earth isn’t flat, however, “but Alpine can’t do that: integrate the dashboard of the Megane E-Tech sedan into the A390 premium sports car”, they’ll scream. We could have written that the Mégane dashboard was also used on the Scénic 100% EV. Well, Alpine has, and it all makes sense. When a product is launched, it’s all about volume(s) and business-projects. And that means big money. A complete redesign of the dashboard costs around 10 million euros, depending on the manufacturer and the platform. And 10 million euros is enough to scupper a project. Was this the case for the Alpine project?
Ten million at the very least, because a car’s driver’s seat is a heavy investment: the dashboard isn’t the only thing affected by a change. You also have to add the seats if the steering wheel is moved from its previous position on the platform.
And then there are the safety tests (particularly for airbags) that need to be redone, as well as the installation of everything hidden by the dashboard, even though on the platform in question here, the air conditioning unit has been housed under the bonnet. Fortunately, not everything is identical to the Renault dashboard. The steering wheel is from the modified Alpine A290, and all the graphics and HMI (human-machine interface) functions have been conceived, designed and developed in line with the Alpine brand DNA. Not to mention the high centre console, which allows you to become one with the machine.
As Laurens van den Acker told LIGNES/auto when he presented the Renault Mégane’s dashboard, the L-shaped screen called Open R ‘is the result of work carried out on the Trezor concept cars in 2016, SymbioZ in 2018 and Morphoz in 2020.’ Integrating the left and central air vents into this L-shaped screen (see photo above) was no easy task: ‘It’s extremely complex to integrate them into the Open R, and I have to say that the engineers had to pull out all the stops, but they rose to the challenge and went along with us!’ Laurens van den Acker then pointed out that ‘this concept can be easily implemented on other models.’ Indeed, the Alpine A390 is now benefiting from it.
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In terms of dimensions, the Alpine A390 differs from the Renault Mégane E-TECH: it is 4.61 m long compared to 4.20 m for the Mégane, 1.88 m wide compared to 1.76 m, while the Mégane is lower (1.50 m compared to 1.53 m for the Alpine). The Alpine takes its revenge in terms of boot space: 532 litres compared to 440 litres for the Renault. If someone had told me that one day I would be discussing the boot space of an Alpine in one of my articles…
In terms of design, it is important to mention the blade at the front end of the bonnet, which is designed to allow air to flow through in order to channel aerodynamic flows, as shown below. As we know, with the quest for ever greater autonomy in these new 100% electric vehicles, aerodynamics is becoming even more important in the design of new products.
This concept of a blade at the end of the bonnet can be interpreted in several ways. On its new Speedtop concept car, BMW captures air upstream through the two nostrils of the grille. Renault’s Emblème concept car takes a more direct approach, similar to Alpine, capturing air on either side of the headlights, in the upper part of the soft nose. The concept appears to be effective, as it is being developed on a number of concepts. Alpine is bringing it into production with its A390.
Whether it’s just for the pleasure of looking at it or more seriously for acquiring it, you’ll only appreciate this A390 if you change your hard drive. The automotive world is undergoing rapid change, but the underlying trend is nothing new: we all railed against front-wheel drive Jaguars based on the Ford Mondeo, we all cried wolf when BMW put diesel engines under the bonnet, and what about Porsche in the same context? We also mocked Mercedes diesel convertibles, but in the end, the world kept turning. With the A390, Alpine is ultimately just responding to regulatory requirements and an unbeatable economic equation: without it, without its future siblings, Alpine would have suffered the same fate as in 1995. Death…
BONUS: a range, a future and memories
Oh, we get it: Alpine is changing! But you have to admit that this photo of the range taken when the A310 was launched in 1971 looks pretty cool! A complete range at the time, it consisted of two versions of the Berlinette and a 2+2 with ambitions to rival the Porsche 911. Above is the current range with the combustion-powered Berlinette – the model that marked the brand’s rebirth in 2017 – and the first two 100% electric Alpines from the Dream Garage: the A290 and the A390. Proof, if any were needed, that Alpine has become a brand and, as such, is set to expand its audience. And the good news is that there are four children missing from the photo.
BONUS: The future A110 will be 100% electric…
By unveiling the future Alpine A110 under a tarpaulin, the manufacturer has confirmed that it will be exclusively electric. And to whet our appetite, the 2026–2027 A110 roadster has revealed its signature lighting, shown below, which differs from that of the A390 crossover. For the rest, we will have to wait, even though the modular APP platform planned for the two-seater A110 and 2+2-seater A310 has been unveiled. It is based on a battery layout that is pushed back behind the passenger compartment rather than under the seats in the A110. All this results in a significantly lower centre of gravity.
BONUS: all representatives of French expertise
Until now, the DS Automobiles brand has rightly prided itself on showcasing French craftsmanship and expertise. The materials (sometimes to the point of caricature in the 2014 DS E-Tense) and finishes now work their magic in the DS N°8 and N°4. But DS Automobiles is no longer the only brand flying the flag for French expertise.
Internally, Peugeot – despite not being part of the Premium division – ‘is proud to contribute to supporting French excellence and expertise and has become a partner of the Société nationale des Meilleurs Ouvriers de France (National Society of the Best Craftsmen of France).’ And these two French brands are now being valiantly challenged by Alpine, which also claims French expertise. Michelin tyres and Devialet sound systems are the icing on the cake for the A390 produced in France. Something the DS No. 8 cannot boast about…
IN SHORT: the Alpine A390 in a few words and figures:
-Two trim levels available: GT (400 hp – 200 km/h) and GTS (470 hp – 220 km/h)
-Range of 520 to 555 km
-Three motors: one wound rotor at the front and two at the rear (synchronous magnet) – one for each wheel.
-Thanks to this architecture, the two rear motors offer independent control of each wheel, enabling the implementation of Alpine Active Torque Vectoring to recreate the driving sensations of an A110.
-400-volt EV architecture.
-Special Michelin A39 tyres.
-Brakes: 365 mm discs, 6-piston calipers, a first for Alpine, which is aiming to give Porsche a run for its money…
-Forged aluminium suspension wishbones.
-Six body colours: Deep Black, Abyss Blue, Alpine Vision Blue, Mercury Silver, Topaz White, Thunder Grey Matt.
