Is The Renault Alaskan Formula Edition One Step Too Far?

Most of the automakers participating in Formula One make sports cars of some kind or another. We’re all familiar (if not as much as we’d like to be) with the supercars that Ferrari and McLaren make, for example. Mercedes offers the AMG GT, and is working on a new hypercar. Red Bull is teaming up with Aston Martin to do the same. Even Honda has the NSX. But not Renault.

The French automaker offers the Alpine A110, but only under a separate brand. So when Renault wants to leverage its F1 exposure into road cars, it makes a) hot hatches, which are regarded as some of the best in the business, and b) special editions of its regular cars. Like the Alaskan.

Based on the same platform as the Nissan NP300/Navara and Mercedes X-Class, the Alaskan is Renault’s work-a-day pickup truck. And it’s just been rolled out (in France anyway) in this special Formula Edition.

Showcased at the company’s home-turf French Grand Prix at the Circuit Paul Ricard this past weekend, the Renault Alaskan Formula Edition. Like the F1 car it’s made to emulate, it’s decked out in black with yellow accents and special graphics. But that’s about the extent of what distinguishes this version of the Alaskan from any other. It still packs the same 2.3-liter diesel four, which produces no more than 190 metric horsepower (140 kW) and 332 lb-ft (450 Nm) of torque.

In that regard it’s hardly any different from the similar treatments available on other Renault commercial vehicles, like the Kangoo, Trafic, and Master vans. But given that the F1 team uses (at least some of) those as support vehicles. You can’t haul an F1 car or many of its parts in the back of a Clio RS, after all. But what the team would need with a short-bed, quad-cab pickup truck when it already has all the vans and trucks it could need is beyond us. So while we’re willing to forgive the style-over-substance, faux-performance treatment on the cargo vans, applying the same to a pickup seems a little out of place. But that could just be us. What do you say: a tie-in well applied, or a bridge too far?