Jean Rédélé was a Dieppe garage proprietor who found early motorsport success with the Renault 4CV in the early 1950s, including class wins at the Mille Miglia and Coupe des Alpes. He progressively modified the 4CV — fitting lightweight aluminium bodies, special five-speed gearboxes, and tuned engines — and drove the resulting cars at Le Mans and Sebring. The success of these specials encouraged him to establish the Alpine brand in 1954, naming it after his Coupe des Alpes victories.
In 1955, working with the glassfibre coachbuilder Chappe et Gessalin, Rédélé produced the A106, a small coupé based on 4CV mechanicals with styling by Giovanni Michelotti and a stiff central tubular backbone chassis — a feature that would define all subsequent Alpine road cars. The A108 followed in 1958, and by 1962 the chassis had been redesigned around Renault R8 mechanicals to produce the A110 Berlinette Tour de France.
The A110 Berlinette — compact, lightweight, and nimble — became the foundation of Alpine's rally programme through the late 1960s and into the 1970s. By 1968 Renault had allocated its entire competition budget to Alpine, and major victories followed: outright wins in the Coupe des Alpes and, in 1971, a first, second, and fourth finish in the Monte Carlo Rally.
The 1973 season was the high point of the rally programme. The newer A110 1800 finished first, second, third, and fifth overall in the World Rally Championship, defeating Porsche, Lancia, and Ford to claim the title outright. It was the first and only time Alpine won the WRC manufacturers' championship. The global oil crisis of 1973 severely damaged demand for specialist sports cars and forced Renault to take over Alpine outright, with the acquisition completed in 1973 and confirmed through the 1970s.
Following the rally championship, Alpine and Renault turned their attention to Le Mans. The programme culminated in the 1978 race, where the Renault Alpine A442B, fitted with a turbocharged engine, won outright. Alpine had been among the first constructors to win an international rally with a turbocharged car — Jean-Luc Thérier had taken a modified A110 to victory on the Critérium des Cévennes in 1972, years before turbos became mainstream.
Alpine also built open-wheel racing cars from 1971, initially in Formula 3 and then Formula 2. Jean-Pierre Jabouille won the European Formula 2 Championship in 1976 using a Renault 2.0-litre engine, and René Arnoux took a second European F2 title in 1977 driving for the customer Martini team. This programme fed directly into a Formula One test mule and Renault's entry into the Formula One World Championship in 1977.
After the A110, Alpine developed the A310 in 1971, initially with a four-cylinder 1.6-litre engine and restyled in 1976 by Robert Opron with the more powerful V6 PRV unit. The A310 was followed by the GTA range from 1984, built from plastic and polyester components and available with normally aspirated or turbocharged V6 PRV engines. The A610 succeeded the GTA in 1991, with revised styling and a substantially reworked chassis, and a total production run of 818 vehicles across all variants. The last Alpine, an A610, left the Dieppe factory on 7 April 1995, with Renault abandoning the brand at that point.
Renault kept the Dieppe plant operational producing Renault Sport models through the late 1990s and 2000s. In February 2016, Groupe Renault announced the relaunch of Alpine, and the production version of the new A110 — a mid-engine sports car that consciously recalled the 1960s Berlinette — was revealed at the Geneva Motor Show in March 2017. In January 2021, Renault merged its Renault Sport Cars and Renault Sport Racing operations into Alpine, forming a new Alpine business unit that encompasses both road car development and the Formula One programme (formerly known as the Renault F1 Team, rebranded as Alpine F1 Team from 2021). Alpine also became an electric vehicle brand with the 2024 launch of the A290 compact electric hatchback, which won the European Car of the Year award in 2025.
The Dieppe plant remains the heart of Alpine production. As of 2019 it employed 386 people across 3.8 hectares of covered buildings, assembling roughly 15 A110s per day by hand on a single line, with riveted and glued aluminium body panels rather than welded steel. Alpine Racing Limited operates from Enstone (for the Formula One programme) and from Viry-Châtillon (for engine development), in partnership with Signatech for endurance racing. Signatech-Alpine won the LMP2 class of the World Endurance Championship in 2016 and 2019-2020 and earned three Le Mans 24 Hours LMP2 victories.
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