Have you ever heard of Alpine? Not to be confused with Alpina, the German BMW tuner, Alpine is a French brand with serious motorsport pedigree.
Back in the 1960s, Alpine made waves with the original A110, a stunning rear-engined sports car powered by Renault. It wasn’t just a pretty face either. The A110 dominated rally stages and helped Alpine become the very first World Rally Champion in 1973.
By the early 1980s, Alpine was brought under the Renault Group umbrella. Fast-forward to today, and Alpine has been tapped to take over as Renault’s official performance division, replacing Renault Sport.
While Alpine has big plans for original models, its first new offering is based on a Renault platform: the all-electric A290 hot hatch. An electric hot hatch might sound like a contradiction, but Alpine is out to prove otherwise.
An Excellent Starting Point
The Alpine A290 is Alpine’s first EV, and it’s their first car to be based on an existing Renault production model. Specifically, it’s based on the excellent new Renault 5 E-Tech, a small electric hatchback that has received raving reviews across the board. That’s a good starting point, but then the Alpine tweaks really come into their own.
The front end has been heavily reworked with Alpine’s own X light signatures, as well as the front fog lights mimicking the taped-up auxiliary lights on the classic A110.
There are also flared fenders, much bigger wheels, a few creases on the rear door that look like vents to cool an engine in the back (even if it’s electric), while the rear gets an aggressive rear diffuser.
Blue is, obviously, the best exterior color. You can get others, of course, but the blue is the best. That’s a fact. There’s also a pleasing retro alloy wheel design and a more modern spiderweb design, if that’s more your thing.
The upgrades continue on the inside, with a steering wheel closely resembling the one in the A110, as well as the same shifter buttons mounted in the center console.
Yes, Alpine went through the trouble of completely changing the shifter setup, as the base Renault 5 has a tiny electronic column shifter. You also get some beefy bucket seats.
You’d be right in saying that more aggressive styling doesn’t really lend itself well to a retro design. However, the A290’s new trinkets have been done very tastefully, resulting in an awesome little retro hatchback that makes it clear it means business.
It’s more aggressive than the Renault 5, make no mistake, but it also retains a lot of that car’s cuteness and charm. Of course, the most important upgrades are under the skin.
The A290 Makes Some Good Power
Like the Renault 5, the A290 is only available with a single electric motor mounted on the front axle. This means it’s FWD, like a lot of the very best Renault hot hatchbacks have always been.
Top Gear reports that the base GT makes 175 hp, while the GTS makes 214 hp. The suspension has been retuned, and the A290 also arrives from the factory with bespoke Michelin Pilot Sport 4S tires.
Pilot Sports are some of the best performance car tires on the market, so that’s some good news. They’re also French, so it makes sense that they’d be the go-to choice for the Alpine.
The suspension setup is also based on a well-established and guaranteed winning formula: MacPherson struts in the front, and a multilink setup in the back — the same as an F30 BMW 3 Series, a car often labeled as the Ultimate Driving Machine.
Sadly, the EV reality also sets in here. This is a tiny car that weighs well over 3,200 lbs. By comparison, a Renault Sport Clio 172 weighs like… three ounces. Okay, it may be more, but not much.
With 175 or 214 hp, you won’t be overtaking many modern cars on the road, but the faster A290 still sprints from 0 to 60 in the mid-six-second range.
As Top Gear pointed out in their review, the benefits of that relatively porky weight figure and the modest power means you can use more of the power more of the time. Especially when that road has a lot of corners.
In that regard, the A290 is a lot like a classic hot hatchback. Just the right amount of power, not a lot of weight relative to what it is, and some good handling characteristics with usable, not excessive horsepower.
Why We Want One
Primarily, we’d want an Alpine A290 because it gives a middle-fingered salute to the massive and overweight electric crossovers. Yes, those crossovers do most of what the A290 does, but the A290 has a trick up its sleeve — it will make you smile when driving on a back road.
Most electric crossovers can’t do that, preferring instead to annoy you with their terrible ride quality. If you live in a crowded city, the Alpine is also easy to park, and while it may be on the heavier side for a hot hatch, it’s as lightweight as a mustache hair compared to those crossovers.
It also looks so darn cool. The retro style of the Renault 5 combined with all the excellent and tasteful details added in by Alpine make the A290 an absolute winner in terms of design.
Alpine’s A290 might not be the fastest EV on paper, but that’s beside the point. It’s a playful, stylish reminder that driving can still be fun, even in an electric world. If this is what the future of hot hatches looks like, we’re all in.