So, after much leakiness, here's the Renault Alpine A110-50 next to the original Alpine A110. What does one have to do with the other? Well, the frog equivalent of a confederate flag on the roof to start.
Renault says the A110-50 concept, so-named as it celebrates the 50th anniversary of the original, translates the classic's characteristics into the 21st century in these ways:
- The sculpted forms of its elegant, flowing bodywork, enhanced by lights over which air seems to flow effortlessly.
- The half-domed additional lamps, with a technical but nostalgic interpretation, thanks to full LED yellow lighting – as it should be.
- A characteristic 3D rear window, which reveals the mid-rear engine.
- Air intakes on each side echo the ducts on the rear wheel arches of the Berlinette. The right-hand opening is for gearbox cooling, the left is for the engine bay.
- Produced by Faster, the carbon-fibre bodywork features a new shade of blue which refreshes and reinterprets the famous original ‘Alpine Blue'. Every opening panel does so with dynamics worthy of the finest GTs, with the bonnet hinged at the front and the engine bay cover opening towards the rear. The doors feature a scissor motion.
Those yellow running lights are what I'm talking about with my confederate flag snakiness above. During the Nazi occupation of France, resistance fighters used yellow fog lights to help identify their own vehicles at night, you know so they didn't try and blow them up with roadside bombs. Since then, yellow lights have been a little bit of Drapeau Francais waving. For a while there, if you bought a German car, you simply had to go yellow light to maintain your dignity.
But yeah, when you make a new concept car using a tubular chassis, 400 HP Japanese V6, F1-style transmission with ceramic clutch plates, all-LED lighting and garish orange side blades, any connection to the original sorta goes out the window.
Production or racing is extremely unlikely, but the A110-50 sure does sound nice turning a wheel in this video created by our friends at Yahoo Autos France.