Six years have passed since Renault resurrected its Alpine performance brand, but drivers in North America have had to sit and watch while the rest of the world got to enjoy the A110.
Now it looks like the Alpine brand might be finally heading for the U.S., but if it does it won’t be bringing combustion-engined sports cars with it. Alpine is going EV-only from 2026, so the next A110 and the new hot hatch, sports sedan and crossover it has planned will all feature electric power, and won’t be with us for a few years yet.
The only batteries you’ll find in this A610 though, are the one attached to the starter motor and the one in the plip-plip keyfob. And though it’s currently in Japan, it could be on American roads in a matter of weeks. The funny thing is, that’s exactly what Renault originally had planned for its rear-engined coupe over 35 years ago.
The 1991-95 Alpine A610 was an update of the earlier Alpine (Renault in the UK) GTA, and though the main visual change was a switch from fixed to pop-up headlights just as many sports cars were thinking about moving in the other direction, Renault claimed 80 percent of the car was new.
Related: Renault’s Alpine Sports Car Brand Is Working On Two Electric SUVs For The USA
Renault, which during the 1980s was in bed with AMC and selling sedans through the American Motors dealer network, had been planning to sell the GTA in North America from 1987. So it spent a heap of money re-engineering the coupe to pass U.S. crash tests, including adding a new steel floorpan (instead of fiberglass), sturdier front subframe and door bars. And a combination of minimum headlight height regulations in the U.S. and America’s love of pop-up lights at the time was also behind a major front-end styling change.
Sadly, although a handful of federalized GTAs were built, Renault’s sports car never did get its green card and the company sold its stake in AMC to Chrysler in 1987. But those North American mods were incorporated into the GTA’s successor, the A610, and made for a stiffer chassis that improved the handling. Other improvements included an extra half liter of capacity for the previously 2.5-liter turbocharged V6 (the base GTA’s atmo 3.0 was dropped), which now made 247 hp (250 PS) and 258 lb-ft (350 Nm) of torque and dropped the zero to 60 mph (97 km/h) time below 6 seconds.
Though reviewers said the A610 was a much better car than the GTA in almost every way, sales remained slow. And considering the Lotus Esprit Turbo, Nissan 300ZX Turbo and Porsche 944 S2 were all available in Europe for up to the equivalent of $10,000 less, it’s not hard to see why only 818 had been built by the time production ended in 1995.
The very early 1991 car pictured here didn’t stay in Europe, but was sold new in Japan, where it’s racked up just 21,000 km (13,000 miles) in 32 years. The left-hand drive A610 has had so little use that the Michelin tires are in desperate need of replacement, but it also means the leather looks just about perfect. It’s currently up for grabs on the Bring-a-Trailer auction site, and although it’s currently still located on the other side of the Pacific, you could win the auction and be driving it on U.S. roads long before the current Alpine crew get their North American act together.
