Renault is retiring the iconic ‘Renault Sport’ badge as all of its sporty models will now be badged as Alpines instead.
The French carmaker announced that the ‘Renault Sport Cars’ division is renamed into ‘Alpine Cars’, as part of Renault Group’s new strategy plans, which were first announced back in January.
“As part of the reorganization of the Renault Group by brand, it is essential that the various entities that make up the Business Unit bear the Alpine name and embody the values and ambitions of the brand,” said Laurent Rossi, Alpine CEO. “Alpine aims to be a premium sports brand at the forefront of innovation and technology. Alpine Cars with its expertise and experience in sports vehicles is a master card in achieving our goals.”
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Renault’s move means that all future high-performance models will get the Alpine badge instead of the ‘R.S.’ sticker that accompanied some of the greatest hot hatches of the past 20 years. As it turns out, the same people behind the ‘Renault Sport’ nameplate will be responsible for the future Alpine models and that is very good news for fans of French corner eaters.
Alpine is set to become a 100 percent EV brand, having already announced a collaboration with Lotus for a new sports car, and planning to introduce a hot hatch version of the battery-powered Renault 5 as well as a sporty crossover model.
“By becoming Alpine Cars, the teams are embarking on a new dynamic, rich in projects carried out with the support of the Alpine Racing teams and all of Renault Group’s businesses. This is an extremely exciting time for our engineers,” added Robert Bonetto, Alpine’s Product Performance and Engineering Director.
