Alpine had been competing in sports car racing throughout the 1960s with a series of small-displacement prototypes — beginning with the M63, M64, and M65 before transitioning to the A210. These cars were powered by Gordini-tuned Renault inline-four engines with displacements typically between one and 1.5 litres, and they excelled at winning class honours and performance index awards at Le Mans rather than competing for outright victory.
Following strong class results with the A210 at the 1966 24 Hours of Le Mans, Alpine founder Jean Rédélé used the results to persuade Renault to support the development of a car capable of overall victory. Gordini was commissioned to build a new 3-litre V8 engine to power the project, though it was not ready in time for the 1967 race.
An interim car — the A211 — was unveiled at the 1967 Paris Motor Show. The occasion carried symbolic weight: Rédélé and Renault's president Pierre Dreyfus presented the car to Charles de Gaulle. However, the Gordini V8 proved unreliable and difficult to integrate with the existing A210 chassis. Alpine engineers concluded it was impossible to properly adapt the engine to the car and instead adopted a transitional solution, modifying the rear-end of the A210 and fitting a new five-speed ZF gearbox along with larger rear brake cooling inlets. The A211's problems became evident at its competitive debut at the Paris 1000 km at Montlhéry.
For 1968, new regulations banned the four-to-seven-litre engines that had given Chaparral, Ferrari, and Ford a decisive advantage over Alpine, raising the French manufacturer's hopes of genuine competitiveness. Alpine responded with the A220, a substantially redesigned car that was wider, larger, and fitted with bigger wheels than its predecessors.
One notable design change was the adoption of a right-hand drive layout, departing from the left-hand configuration of all earlier Alpine prototypes. The decision was made on the practical grounds that most circuit corners are right-handers, meaning a right-hand drive position would give the driver a better sightline through the majority of turns.
At the 1968 24 Hours of Le Mans, Alpine entered four A220s. Only one finished the race. Despite this setback, the smaller A210s continued to perform reliably, finishing second, third, and fourth on the performance index. Further poor results followed in 1969, and the gap between Alpine's performance and the leading prototype entries remained unacceptably large.
With results consistently below expectations and competition growing stronger, Alpine withdrew from international sports car racing following the 1969 season. The company concentrated its resources on rallying, where the A110 would go on to win the 1973 World Rally Championship and the Monte Carlo Rally — making its name in a discipline better suited to the manufacturer's capabilities at the time.
Alpine did not return to prototype sports car racing until the 1974 European 2 Litre Sports Car Championship, running the Alpine A441. That patient rebuilding eventually culminated in the overall victory at the 1978 24 Hours of Le Mans with the Renault Alpine A442 — the success that the A220 programme had been intended to deliver a decade earlier.
The A220 represents the point at which Alpine made its most direct attempt to challenge the leading prototype manufacturers of the late 1960s on their own terms. Its failure to deliver results, following the uncompetitive A211 campaign, shaped the company's decision to prioritise rallying over prototype racing for most of the following decade. The car's existence nonetheless confirmed that Alpine and Renault had the ambition for an outright Le Mans challenge, an ambition that was finally realised with the A442 in 1978.