Track-ready hardcore sports cars don’t typically have carbon emissions listed among their key performance targets. It’s a telling mark of the industry-challenging times in which we’re living that the new Alpine A110 R absolutely had to.
Like many car makers, Alpine still depends on its domestic market for around half of its sales. Not many domestic markets are quite like France, though. While the country’s ‘Malus’ CO2 emissions tax on new cars currently adds about €40,000 to the price of some of its rivals, the A110 is penalised to the tune of only around €3000 because it is small, light and efficient.
Quite the competitive advantage, isn’t it? And, funnily enough, while Alpine’s customers apparently said they’d be willing to pay for performance-enhancing value that they could easily touch, see and appreciate in a car like this, they weren’t keen to pay the French treasury much more for it in tax. “That’s why we knew that we had to work with the powertrain we already had in the A110 S,” says Xavier Sommer, Alpine’s A110 programme director.