Alpine A290_B: electric bomb with a touch of R5 Turbo

Highlights

• Electric, front wheel drive
• Sporty retro Renault 5
• First of three new Alpines
• Production model coming next year

As a bolt from the blue, a smashing conceptual retro version of the Renault 5 suddenly appeared in early 2021. A preview of a brand new compact electric Renault with a historically sound body. Next year is the time, then the production model will appear, which, in addition to its mischievous appearance, must also convince in terms of price. The new R5 will be cheaper than the Zoe and than its direct competitors, such as the Peugeot e-208 and Opel Corsa-e. To reduce costs, Renault has used 70 percent of the parts from the CMF-B base of, among others, the Renault Clio for the new CMF-B-EV base. The R5 will also receive modest but undoubtedly sufficient hardware for an EV. However, it will certainly not be a thoroughbred budget EV such as the Dacia Spring, and Alpine is now emphasizing that by spectacularly taking off with the reborn R5.

Alpine A290_B

The French call their take on the new R5 the A290_B, with the B (or rather the β) of beta. A concept car and therefore the beta version of the A290, that’s how you should see it. Although still unconfirmed, we therefore assume that the production version listens to the name Alpine A290. Whence that name? It’s a Renault 5, right? Well, Alpine doesn’t look at it that way. It mainly sees it as its own model and attaches its own name to it. “An A with three numbers, that’s historically part of Alpine,” explains Sovany Ang, co-responsible for Product Performance at Alpine, among others. AutoWeek at the presentation of the A290_B. Ang says that the 2 indicates the size of the car, where the 90 indicates that it is a ‘lifestyle vehicle‘ is. For example, the 10 in A110 indicates that it is a sports car. According to that approach, the already announced ‘GT X-Over’, in addition to the A290 and the following A110, would probably be called the A390 or A490, the third new model from Alpine.

Anyway, back to the Alpine A290_B. As much as Alpine wants to portray it as a creation all its own, it is abundantly clear that the retro R5 forms the basis. However, Alpine has poured its own sauce from top to bottom, and that certainly applies to the interior. More on that later, first the outside.

Attention to detail

The sporty decoration comes back in all kinds of ways. At the front, the spotlights and headlights, among other things, ensure this. All four are partly taped, a nod to rally sport according to Alpine. No ‘Renault-wybertje’ between the lamps as on the R5, here the Alpine brand name is written out in large. At the corners of the front are two fairly large air intakes that partly let the wind through a hole in the bodywork to the front wheels. Wheels that protrude a bit further than on the R5; the Alpine A290_B has a slightly wider track. This is further accentuated by the wheel arch extensions, made of special carbon fiber mixed with blue accents.

You will find the same material at the bottom of the car on the front bumper, along the sides and at the bottom of the butt. Just in front of the rear wheels we see two slots in the body that clearly refer to the cooling openings of the Renault 5 Turbo. Behind the top is a button hidden with which you open the driver’s door. At the rear, just like at the front, Alpine has gone its own way. There are completely different rear lights than we saw on the R5 Prototype, the stripe of LED lighting that ties them together has made way for a small spoiler and at the bottom of the rear is of course a thick diffuser-like element. Not to be missed is the roof spoiler, another subtle nod to the R5 Turbo.

Alpine has incorporated special details in the A290_B from front to back. For example, there are blue flashing lights in front of the air intakes at the front with the names of Alpine’s F1 drivers. Gasly at the right turn signal, Ocon at the left. The central wheel nuts of the striking alloy wheels also refer to racing, of course, the LED elements in the rear light units are reminiscent of the lights in the rear wing of modern Formula 1 cars. In the carbon fiber part of the rear bumper you will find two round units that are reminiscent of exhaust tips from a distance. The electric Alpine A290_B obviously does not have these, they are cooling fans as you sometimes encounter on a gaming PC. Furthermore, the windows include stickers with a kind of mountain shape, which is a reference to the origin of Alpine. Founder Jean Rédélé wanted to make cars with which you could blast through the Alps. The white basic color of the Alpine A290_B refers to the snow in the Alps, while the black represents the city, because the A290 will often have to hold its own in the city.

Driver central

Unlike the Renault 5 Prototype, the Alpine A290_B immediately has an interior, although we must note that it is not exactly ready for production. It’s getting pretty extreme. The Alpine A290_B has a true McLaren F1-like seating configuration, with a centrally placed racing bucket for the driver and two seats for passengers diagonally behind it. Alpine calls the passengers ‘spectators’, because ‘the driver is central and he can show what he has to offer’.

The fact that the driver is central is evident, for example, from the illuminated red line that runs from front to back across the center of the car and also partly continues into the interior. The dashboard – if you can still call it that -, together with the lower part of the windscreen, protrudes particularly far into the nose of the car. From above, the dashboard should therefore be reminiscent of the front wing of a Formula 1 car.

The real thing

We see nothing or hardly anything of the quite extravagant interior on the production version. The exterior, Alpine assures us, is very production-ready. Think away some small details here and there and you have Alpine’s variant of the new Renault 5 in front of you. Unfortunately, Alpine is not releasing much about what is happening under the striking carriage for the time being. We do know that this concept car is 4.05 m long, 1.85 m wide and 1.48 m high and is on the same platform as, of course, the Renault 5 and also the new Renault 4. Alpine also reveals that the production model a form of torque vectoring gets. On the front wheels, because it will be a front-wheel drive, just like the Renault 5. The production A290 also gets a multi-link rear axle and Brembo brakes with four pistons per caliper. And then the power? The moving (!) concept car has, as AutoWeek from Alpine understands, two electric motors in the front that probably release the 500 hp of electrical power on the front wheels. Alpine previously released that the production model will be roughly 220 hp strong and has one electric motor. We can already experience this firsthand next year, because just like the new Renault 5, the Alpine A290 will appear in 2024.