CAR UK

Ben Miller Editor To this day I’ve never driven anything like it. My one and only contact with the cultural touchstone that is the American muscle car in context (and context is crucial: a Mustang on the M25 is still a Mustang, but it doesn’t work like it does on sun-scorched US black-top, starring in its own mind’s-eye art movie every 500 yards) was a few unforgettable days with a Dodge Hellcat. You know the Hellcat: that unholy, 707hp union of super-charged 6.2-litre V8 and a car so charmingly built down to a price the entire rig came in at just $60,000/£48,000. Was it good? It was; certainly if good is completely capturing your imagination and laying down memories so potent I can still smell the rubber when I close…

IN THE SPOTLIGHT Thought Alpine was a one-trick pony? You thought wrong. First the brand itself and its most famous car were revived for the 21st century; now comes Alpine 2.0. There will be a range of cars, all electric, including a replacement for its A110, a crossover SUV to tap into that most lucrative of markets and an electric hot hatch based on the upcoming Renault 5 EV. What you see here is the A290b: our first look at that Alpine hot hatch, and a car that’ll kick off Alpine’s EV revolution. ‘When it was first discussed, the immediate feeling was to do a real hot hatch,’ Antony Villain, Alpine’s head of design, tells CAR. ‘I think that’s something that’s missing right now, and something that French manufacturers are…

Insider JG: ‘It’s great to see a hotter Renault 5 coming, but isn’t this traditionally Renault Sport’s thing? Except Renault Sport has now been dissolved…’ AV: ‘The know-how is always there, though. Obviously if you go further back into the company’s history, it used to be Alpine and Gordini. And those two were merged together to create Renault Sport. And, of course, Renault Sport has been really successful, but sometimes it was a little disconnected.’ JG: ‘But what exactly makes Alpine any different to Renault Sport?’ AV: ‘Putting everybody in the same place, with all of their know-how, just makes sense. Now that Alpine is becoming a real brand with our own CEO [the affable Laurent Rossi] and everything under one roof, it means we can directly benefit from Formula…

Insider Renault 5 EV The basis of the forthcoming A290. It’s already a reimagining of the past in itself, but now Alpine’s turning Renault’s 2024 supermini into a more potent street racer. Alpine A110 The reinvented icon, reminding the world what Alpine means, before the switch to an all-electric range. The A110 will go pure electric, joining the A290 and a crossover EV. Alpine A523 A tad more tenuous? Design boss Antony Villain has taken inspiration from Alpine’s F1 cars for the A290b’s racing car-spec interior technology Renault Sport Twingo Gordini Alpine’s treatment of the R5 echoes the days a decade or so ago when Gordini branding was sprinkled onto Renault hot hatches. Let’s hope there’s more substance this time.…

PAST AND FUTURE Instead of being a Urus derivative as originally planned, Lambo is preparing a battery-electric, four-seat, two-door EV which philosophically connects to the 1972 third-generation Espada. Except it’ll be quite a bit taller and more like an SUV in many ways. Tenuous link? Maybe, but Lambo knows where the money is. MULTIPLE MODELS Like the Huracan, it's understood that Lamborghini intends to offer different variants, with even pricier Performante and SV derivatives, as well as a possible Sterrato off-roader. As for the standard model, our intel suggests a rough mark-up of around £20,000 compared to a Urus. DELAYED GENIUS While the Revuelto and the Huracan replacement will use Lambo’s new ‘monofuselage’ (above), the new car’s all-electric DNA means it’ll take advantage of VW Group’s set of delayed SSP…

Insider Tuesday 18 April. The first day of Auto Shanghai, this spring’s huge Chinese motor show. That’s when it became perfectly clear that we need to take the Chinese car industry deadly seriously – not just as a make- ’em-cheap, pile-’em-high disruptor, but as a potent creative force that seems more in touch with what the car-buying world wants than many longer-established global players. The numbers are astonishing. There were over 1500 vehicles on display at the show. There were 150 world debuts (although two thirds of those were titchy urban runabouts). There were 38 models claiming to be equipped for Level 4 self-driving. And the show happened against the backdrop of a seismic shift in the balance of power: after decades at the top, Volkswagen has lost the lead…