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Carsales Staff29 Jan 2015
NEWS

Alpine Vision Gran Turismo officially breaks cover

Renault's sports car brand unleashes 320km/h V8-powered dream car to tempt virtual racers

The revival of French sports car brand Alpine continues apace with its latest release arguably the most wild yet. Dubbed the Alpine Vision GT concept, the vehicle was designed for the world's most popular racing simulator, Gran Turismo 6 on the Playstation 3 games console.

The virtual race car can be piloted in the digital world but Alpine (pron: Al-peen) has also built a full scale model of the vehicle to be presented at the Festival Automobile International in Paris from January 27.

Originally leaked by a French website in early January, the Alpine Vision GT concept car displays a radical design based around a carbon monocoque chassis. The car's style is said to pay tribute to famous Alpines of the past, including the A210 and A110, but is powered by a monstrous mid/rear-mounted 4.5-litre V8 that bangs out 335kW (450hp) and 580Nm of torque.

The V8 engine spins to 7500rpm and while peak power hits at 6500rpm, maximum torque arrives at just 2000rpm according to Alpine. Combined with the vehicle's ridiculously aerodynamic form, which features more ducts than an air-conditioning repair shop, that kind of mumbo is good enough to propel the virtual car to an estimated top speed of 320km/h.

As well as celebrating the reborn Alpine brand's 60th anniversary this year, after it was founded in 1955, the Alpine Vision GT concept also provides clues as to the design of the company's first fully-fledged production car in decades, which will be revealed publicly in 2016, after an expected 'concept' teaser later this year.

Antony Villain, design director at Alpine, explained.

"The design needed to contribute to the lightweight feel and convey an impression to the driver of being at one with the machine ... We even took advantage of the exercise to subtly conceal several details that are directly inspired by the future Alpine, which will see the light in 2016 – but I can't give any more away about that..." teased Villain.

The last car built by Alpine at its Dieppe factory in France – which is where Renault Sport models are now built – was the A610 in 1995, and 21 years later, in 2016, we'll see the next Alpine model.

But until then, fans can get involved with the Alpine Vision GT concept, which according to the digital data is every bit a race car. It weighs just 900kg, is rear-wheel drive, features a seven-speed sequential gearbox and makes use of double wishbone suspension with adjustable spring/damper assemblies. The stoppers are big 390mm front discs chomped by six-piston calipers, while the rear gets 355mm discs and four-piston calipers.

Many readers who frequent these pages and have seen the dozen or so vehicles from Toyota, Mercedes, BMW, Mitsubishi and others designed and developed specifically for the Gran Turismo 6 simulation game may be wondering "what's the point? Why waste their time?"

Terry Baillon, Alpine's simulation and chassis development engineer for the French brand's upcoming production sports car, put it this way:

"There is genuine value in working this way. In my opinion, there is a bright future for this sort of collaboration. If we correlate the information we glean from both Gran Turismo and the real vehicle, further developments will become possible. Our objective is to offer a car whose dynamics match those that we initially defined.

"If everything is modelled perfectly, we can even continue to work on the car and compare it to other models, so that we can see where we stand," concluded Baillon.

Alpine's return to production car manufacture will also see the new French sports cars available for sale in Australia in 2016, and the first model is expected to be a relatively low power, but ultra-light weight mid-engined sports car.

The rear-drive vehicle will be powered by a four-cylinder turbo-petrol engine borrowed from Renault Sport, which means either a 1.6 from the Clio RS or the 2.0 from the Megane RS, but because of the extensive use of carbon-fibre it will be far lighter than its Renault cousins. Annual production is expected to range between 3000 and 5000 vehicles.

It's not yet clear where the Alpine sports car will be positioned in Australia, but if it comes in at under $100,000 it will rival the likes of the Lotus Elise S and Alfa Romeo 4C, both European rear-drive, mid-engined compact sports cars.

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Written byCarsales Staff
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