When Renault Group CEO Luca de Meo walked in through the door of the Covid-wounded company in 2020, premium sports car brand Alpine had its neck on the chopping block.
“We had no plan after the A110; there was no plan for Alpine, basically,” de Meo told journalists at the recent unveiling of the A390.
But de Meo saw Alpine as an important margin-boosting premium asset so set in motion a revival – similar to what he did with Abarth while at the FCA Group and Cupra while at the Volkswagen Group.
The plan was agreed while Renault was still haemorrhaging millions. “It was a bit of a crazy thing," de Meo admitted.
Now Alpine’s one-car line-up has been bolstered by the A290, a hot version of the Renault 5, and the new A390, a crossover based on the Renault Scenic platform but given a wallop of power and intriguing handling prospects from three electric motors.
After that, however, Alpine will dive headlong into the murky world of electric sports cars, where customers and profits are mere rumours rather than quantifiable fact. Can the brand really survive a lengthy period of capital-intensive adventuring into the unknown?
De Meo is unshakeable even as he admits the scale of the job to create a credible rival to the likes of Porsche. “To launch a premium brand, you need 20 years, minimum,” he said. “It took Audi 25-30 years to be in the club – and every year billions and billions of investment. We're not going to do that in one generation.”
Renault doesn’t have billions of billions to spend on Alpine and, perhaps more damagingly, the brand’s formative years will be spent in a very different world to the relatively benign place that Audi ultimately flourished in.
For one thing, the vast US premium car market is as good as off-limits for newcomers right now, and Alpine has put on ice plans for two bigger electric SUVs that were going to spearhead its launch there.
A single large SUV is still nominally in the pipeline, but it depends on a more welcoming US.
Join the debate
Add your comment
Renault and Dacia can seemingly do no wrong at the moment, commercially successful and with some great products. But the idea of Alpine transforming into a French Porsche rival is I feel a bit ambitious. Back in the Eighties the A610 was a credible competitor to the Porsche 944, but few were sold. And today, outside a small group of enthusiasts, few will have heard of Alpine. At best they may have noticed a pink liveried Formula 1 car trailing the field and crashing a lot!
I think the fundamental problem is that nobody wants a substitute Porsche, no matter how good. Just ask Jaguar, Toyota, Lotus, Alfa-Romeo stci...
Renault should just stick to what it is good at.