I'm going to keep this short and salty: the 1972 Alpine A110 is a load of crap. It is exactly what you can expect of a 48 year old, RR car on bias ply tyres allowed to run loose without a diff: soft, twitchy, and with so little grip that you can't even use all of the floaty front end's grip on corner entry because the rear end will break out without question if you do. It leans and rolls in corners more than my ex crush leans away from me in a movie theatre when I attempted a kiss*. It's the sort of car you fight more than your opponents in a race. For crying out loud, even the windshield wipers in this car wants to kill you: they're chrome, and the glare they will produce in strong sunlight will blind you if you race in cockpit view, putting to waste the excellent visibility typical of a small car of its era.
*not a true story. For some reason my previous previous crush just immediately came to mind with how much you need to baby this moody, spoiled brat of a car, while it offers absolutely nothing but looks in return. Also yes, driving excessively horrendous cars makes me open up more than I perhaps should about my personal life, and it might be an exploitable trope.
Yet, for all my grievances against it, I couldn't find anything within reason that could even hold a candle to it on the track, just to rub wounded pride on salt. It weighs 1,576...... pounds. That's 715kg in metric, which makes its 140PS go a long, long way, especially when mated to a snappy, low ratio five speed stick, an emerging novelty in its era. Yes, low power compensated for by low gearing does mean low top speed: the A110 will do 196km/h (122mph) without slipstream, drag limited. A comparable Renault R8 Gordini gets eaten alive on long enough straights, and a modern Mazda Roadster gets utterly destrolished both on the acceleration and corners. A Stratos that cost six times the A110 with 46PS more might rival it, but for some stupid reason, it didn't cross my mind to race the Stratos this week. It most likely even runs circles around a 911 of its era, literally if not figuratively, because this thing will NOT hold a straight line. Oh, and it looks five times better than a 911 as well, in my opinion.
It's ridiculously capable. It's even a great looker. It's just... why the hell were people in the seventies so obsessed with mounting their car engines in the rear? It's very challenging to drive at best, and utterly frustrating at worst. It left a very bitter taste in my mouth after just a warm up session with it. Truly, the A110 is proof that it takes more than a flawless résumé to win people over: the personality needs a lot of working on. This car will never cooperate with you, and even getting it right feels more like narrowly escaping death than actually rewarding. It's a car for sadists, gluttons for punishment. The kind of people whose dream partner is an abusive, manipulative, capable person who knows their worth and holds you at arm's length using your own hope, dangling a seemingly attainable carrot of greatness right in front of you, but has never planned to reciprocate from the start. It'd at least make for a great learner car like the Golf, if there was any practical application today for learning how to go fast in a RR car. And for a hundred grand... fwoh, the A110 is as expensive as my previous crush as well.
It's such a Beater, it damn near beat me into a sand dune in Horse Thief Mile and used itself as a pretty gravestone to flaunt its own achievement. I'm actually surprised I even gave this thing five paragraphs.
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