Alpine was founded in Dieppe by Jean Rédélé, a rally enthusiast who had modified Renault 4CVs for competition in the post-war era, building lighter bodywork over their chassis and competing at events including Le Mans and Sebring. His success attracted factory financial support from Renault and led to the formal establishment of the Societe Anonyme des Automobiles Alpine.
The A110, introduced in 1963, used a steel backbone chassis clothed in a fibreglass body — a construction approach Alpine had pioneered and that delivered low weight critical to rally performance. The car succeeded the A108 and used Renault components throughout, with the engine mounted in the rear. Initially it was offered with 1.1-litre R8 Major or R8 Gordini engines, but over its production life the A110 received increasingly powerful units as its rally programme demanded more performance.
By the late 1960s, having won several French rallies using cast-iron R8 Gordini engines, the car was fitted with the aluminium-block engine from the Renault 16 TS. With twin Weber 45 carburettors this unit produced 125 PS at 6,000 rpm, allowing the production 1600S to reach 210 km/h. Later competition-specification cars received engines of up to 1.8 litres, producing as much as 185 bhp.
The A110 achieved international recognition during the 1970-1972 seasons competing in the newly created International Championship for Manufacturers, winning events throughout Europe and establishing itself as one of the strongest rally cars of the period. Notable early results included victory at the 1971 Monte Carlo Rally with Swedish driver Ove Andersson at the wheel.
Jean-Luc Thérier drove an A110 to victory at the 1972 Criterium des Cevennes, in the process becoming the first driver to win an international rally with a turbocharged engine, predating the turbocharged Audi Quattro by eight years.
When Renault acquired Alpine in 1971 and the International Championship was replaced by the World Rally Championship for the 1973 season, Renault chose to contest the new series with the A110. The works team fielded Bernard Darniche, Jean-Pierre Nicolas, and Jean-Luc Thérier as permanent drivers, with notable guest drivers including Jean-Claude Andruet, who won the 1973 Monte Carlo Rally. The A110 won the majority of events the works team entered that season and Alpine-Renault became the first manufacturer to win the World Rally Championship.
The car's victories in the 1971 and 1973 Monte Carlo Rally — a 1-2-3 finish in both cases — are among the most celebrated results in the event's history.
By 1974 the competitive landscape had shifted decisively. The mid-engined Lancia Stratos, the first car designed and built specifically for rally racing, was operational and homologated, and it proved substantially faster than the A110 on most surfaces. The rear-engined A110 had reached the limits of its development potential: attempts to add fuel injection produced no performance benefit, and a DOHC 16-valve cylinder head proved unreliable. Chassis modifications — including adoption of the A310's double wishbone rear suspension in the homologated 1600SC — also failed to close the gap to the Stratos.
Renault had purchased Alpine outright following the decline in sales that accompanied the car's competitive obsolescence. The A110 was gradually retired from top-level rallying after 1974, though it remained a staple of national and historic events.
Total production at the Dieppe factory amounted to 7,176 cars before manufacturing ceased in July 1977, with a further 1,566 built under licence by FASA-Renault in Valladolid, Spain between 1967 and 1978. Other licensed producers operated in Mexico (under the Dinalpin name by Diesel Nacional from 1965 to 1974) and in Bulgaria (as the Bulgaralpine from 1967 to 1969). The Spanish cars were the only licensed variants sold under the same name and to the same specifications as the French-built originals.
The Alpine A110's status as the first World Rally Champion gave it a permanent place in the history of the sport. Its lightweight construction philosophy — fibreglass body over a backbone chassis, modest engine displacement rewarded by low total weight — represented an approach to rally-car design that differed fundamentally from the more powerful, heavier machines that followed in the Group B era. The car remains a regular presence at historic rally events including the Rallye Monte-Carlo Historique. A modern production version of the A110 was introduced by Renault in 2017, explicitly referencing the original's design language and lightweight principles.
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