Alpine A110R Review | Is it worth £90k?

Extracting the most out of everything is human nature. The last drop, ounce, millimeter and second are sacred. Their finite form and value elevated to a status so precious as to bend the laws of time and space itself. We maximize what we have to ease our desire for what we don't. It's in our DNA, it always will be, and cars definitely aren't an exception. This is the Alpine A110. It's been one of our favorite sports cars since its relaunch in 2017, largely because it takes an entirely different approach from its rivals. It doesn't feel as serious or stern as alternatives on Porsche or Lotus and its delicate curb weight allows it to glide over 2023's beaten, broken roads like no other car on sale. We adore this car not so much for what it has, but for what it doesn't. Which makes it all the more intriguing that Alpine decided to introduce this, the A110R. It's firmer, more focused, more serious, and at nearly £90,000 a hell of a lot more expensive than any other A110. And while this car is roughly the same price as a nearly new Porsche Cayman GT4, it still has the same 296bhp four-cylinder engine as the A110S. So where does that extra £28,000 go? Unsurprisingly, much of it is on the chassis. Coilover suspension is introduced, along with ZF dampers that manually adjust through 20 different settings. Spring rates are also 10% stiffer all round, while anti-roll stiffness is up 10% at the front and 25% at the rear. The suspension is 10mm lower as standard, but could be lowered by a further 10mm for track use. The 320mm brakes and Michelin Cup 2 tyres, optional on the A110S, are standard, with the car now specially developed on the latter. Also, weight-saving and aero upgrades have been produced hand-in-hand thanks to the extensive use of lightweight materials. So the front splitter, rear diffuser, side skirts, air intake valves and the swan-neck rear spoiler all use carbon fibre, and that helps bring the weight down by 34kg versus the A110S. There's also 29kg extra downforce at the rear end, and that's largely due to the position and orientation of the rear wing blade being tweaked, plus front-end downforce has been reduced in order to make the car more balanced and stable. Clearly, Alpine has gone to huge efforts to squeeze every inch of performance out of the chassis, even going so far as to 3D-print the exhaust system to save 700g. It's an admirable approach, yet the A110 was hardly a hefty car in the first place, and more importantly, a lot of what we love about the regular car is its softer suspension, liberal body roll and modest grip. So, by turning those characteristics on their head, what exactly are you left with? Well, my main concern would be how the much stiffer suspension handles your typical bumpy British B-road, because while this car was designed for the track, it would be a shame not to take something so light and agile onto the road. It's clear straight away that the A110R doesn't have the Alpine compliancy that we're used to. When you get a bump coming through the chassis, it feels much more abrupt and sharper, and the car also feels a lot more hunkered down into the road, way more so than the 10mm ride height difference actually suggests. Crucially, though, it's not a step too far. In this setting, the A110R feels roughly 25% stiffer, yet what it loses in pliancy, it gains in voracious adhesion to the road surface. Honestly, you'd be hard-pressed to find any car with this much on-road grip that's so readily available. The regular A110 is pretty good at using its weight to settle itself into a corner, but this is something else entirely. You can just get on the brakes, point it in towards the apex, and then because the weight is just so much better controlled, you can do far more things with it in terms of the speed that you're carrying. There's just so much precision coursing through this Alcantara wheel. It feels like a really fingertippy car because it just does exactly what you ask of it with no fuss at all. Driving an A110 previously, you were well aware that its slow-motion, tail-happy slides through corners were never the fastest way to take a bend, but you didn't care. It was fun. The A110R makes you care, however. It makes you want to go faster to push the car harder and to also find that little squeak of understeer, which you will in longer corners if you ask the front wheels to do things that the laws of physics simply don't cater for. This is what happens when you team a really low kerb weight with a super-focused setup. You end up with a car that can do things that far more expensive, more complicated machines really struggle to. It's just so pure and simple, and it is awfully good fun. The A110R is so planted that any kind of oversteer on a dry road simply wouldn't be safe. And even then, with the lack of a limited-slip diff, it doesn't feel particularly enjoyable or natural. Instead, the A110R's talents lie in zipping from one apex to the next like a flawlessly piloted Scalextric slot car. It's impressive and addictive in equal measure, yet there is a problem. The chassis' ultimate performance level has been increased. There's no doubt about that, but as we said earlier, the engine hasn't improved with it. Yes, the A110R is a tiny bit quicker, 3.9 seconds to 62mph versus 4.5, but that's because it's lighter. The A110's near-perfect balance between power and handling has been tipped in favour of the latter, and it does leave the Renault-sourced engine feeling underpowered, especially in comparison to rivals such as the Porsche Cayman. You know what? In 2023, I'm here for a sports car that's perhaps a little bit underpowered. I'd rather that than the other way round. We've got years of two-tonne-plus electric SUVs with 800-brake horsepower, so why not enjoy this for what it is? It's hardly slow. Saying that the A110R is absolutely the ultimate A110 would be wrong. It's far more subjective than that, not least when you factor in the colossal price difference to its more basic siblings. Yet, there's no denying that the transformation from soft, playful sports car to razor-sharp carbon-fibre-clad scalpel is frighteningly effective and also slightly unexpected. There will be things that you can do in this that you won't be able to in a regular A110, and equally, there'll be things that you can do in that that you certainly can't in this. See out the back, for example. But if you like the idea of a car that's been honed and fettled and finessed and moulded into something that dynamically has no more margin to give, then, yeah, you'll like this. I think you'll like it a lot. I know I do. you