Everything flows
It has been 70 years since Jean Rédélé founded Alpine in his hometown of Dieppe. Why Alpine, when you come from a port city by the sea? Until now, it was always said that Rédélé was so happy with his good performance in the Coupe de Alpes that he was inspired by it. However, an elderly Frenchman told us that this was not true, that Rédélé’s wife had relatives on the Côte d’Azur who owned a house called Alpine, and that the brand name came from there. In any case, Rédélé, born in 1922, started building his own vehicles in 1952, designed by Giovanni Michelotti, probably three in total, with aluminium bodies built by Allemano. This led to three more vehicles, designated A106 Coach, before the brand was even founded. Rédélé then developed a small sports car with a plastic body based on the Renault 4CV, which he was allowed to present to the Renault boss. The bigwigs at the state-owned company were so unimpressed that Rédélé decided to create his own brand with the help of his father-in-law and Chappe et Gessalin, where the bodywork was manufactured. By 1960, 251 A106 vehicles had been hand-built in Paris, with a further 40 manufactured under licence in Belgium. From 1957, there was also an A106 convertible, again designed by Michelotti – and from then on, things get relatively complicated.
In 1958, the Alpine A108 convertible was launched. It differed only in details from the A106 convertible, and production was also carried out in parallel. In 1959, the A108 Coupé was introduced on the same basis, followed in 1959 by an A108 Coupé 2+2, but this was now an independent design by Chappe et Gessalin. But let’s stay with the A108 Convertible and Coupé for a moment, which were redesigned by Phillipe Charles in 1960 and given the suffix ‘Sport’. At the same time, Charles was also working on another model, the A108 Berlinette ‘Tour de France’, which was launched in 1962 as the A110 Berlinette – and is undoubtedly the brand’s most famous model. But this article is not about the famous Berlinette, but about what is probably Alpine’s least known model, the A110 GT4. As already mentioned, it began its career as the A108 Coupé 2+2, intended as a ‘Grand Tourisme’ and suitable for families – although the six centimetres of extra wheelbase and 11 centimetres of extra length did not exactly provide generous space for rear passengers. Six different engine variants were also available for the 2+2, but fewer than 100 were sold in total. This was probably due to the fact that the rear end took some getting used to.
But even its successor, the GT4, which was unveiled at the Paris Motor Show in 1962 alongside the Berlinette, never managed to capture the imagination of the masses, with only 263 units produced by 1969. Want to know more? Here you go: 1963 – 35 units, 1964 – 48, 1965 – 54, 1966 – 53, 1967 – 38, 1968 – 24 and 1969 – 11. The design was again by Chappe et Gessalin, which was certainly better than that of the A108 Coupé 2+2, but still not a great success – you have to look twice to be sure that this vehicle really is an Alpine. The GT4 was already much more practical, with a wheelbase that was 17 centimetres longer than the Berlinette at 2.27 metres, a length of more than 4 metres for the first time (4.05 metres to be precise) and a roof that provided three centimetres more headroom.
The first GT4s had to make do with the 953 cc engine with 51 hp. But then there were also the 1.1-litre versions with 66, 95 and 105 hp, and finally, in 1966, three models with a 1.3-litre engine and a very lively 115 hp – certainly enough for fathers in a hurry, given that we are only talking about a weight of around 750 kilograms. Incidentally, the GT4 was also built under licence in Mexico, where another 118 units are said to have been produced as the Dinalpin – it’s nice that the abbreviation Dina, that of the Mexican partner, stands for Diesel Nacional. In total, only about 50 GT4s are thought to have survived.
We have the entire Alpine model history here.
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