AS 95421

Alpine A610

1992 Alpine-Renault A610 Turbo (Type D503)

Imported in April 2007. Exported in August 2021, last reg. was CR93743

Tangkrogen, Aarhus, Denmark, May 2015 in the paddock area of the 2015 CRAA car show.

This car was parked next to two other famous Alpine models: a A110 and a A310

It may not look super spectacular, but the A610 is in fact a very rare car, with only 818 built between 1991 and 1995. Following in the footsteps of the V6 Turbo, with the A610, Alpine wanted to take a further step up the exclusivity-ladder for sports cars, tweaking the already high prices a little further... which in hindsight may not have been such a good idea, since it looked a lot like the cheaper predecessors, so buyers may have felt they were not getting proper value for money and that it wouldn't give them the level of prestige they were looking for.

You could say Alpine made the car too exclusive for its own good, since sales failed to live up to expectations, leading to the premature cancellation of production, but ironically this is now helping the car gain prestige, since it's so rare.

This particular car seems to be extremely well cared for, only registered for a few months every summer (april/may to september/october), without exception since imported in 2007. It appears to have some kind of connection to an Opel Speedster ( http://platesmania.com/dk/nomer13485612 ) - for years these two tend to get registered and deregistered simultaneously every year and with neighbouring plates, so they could be "his and hers-cars"?

Alpine was originally an independent car make who worked closely together with Renault (early models used the engines from Renault 8 Gordini, for example.) Over the years, Renault bought bigger and bigger shares of Alpine until finally taking completely over.

This has led to extreme unclarity in naming. The earliest models were (mostly) called simply Alpine, but as Renault's influence and co-ownership increased, so did the inclusion of the Renault name... at first to Alpine Renault, then gradually to Renault Alpine - but naming also differed depending on the circumstances and who you asked: sales brochures, motor journalists, car owners, encyclopedias etc., and it even differed between countries.

So it's hardly surprising that Renault has decided, that in 2021, their Formula 1 team will change name to... Alpine! The Alpine name keeps popping up in various places, replacing, or alongside Renault

First A610 in DK-gallery and only the 35th on the whole site... 15th outside France.

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