Alpine A310, with 4 and 6 cylinders

Auto Motor Klassiek » History » Alpine A310, with 4 and 6 cylinders
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Alpine, once a company that specialized in making Renaults faster, later became a Renault subsidiary. The brand scored impressive with the Alpine A110, which won the Monte Carlo rally in 1973 and the World Championship rally. The successor was the Alpine A310, which first had a tuned 17TS / Gordini four-cylinder engine as its power source. 127 hp supplied that block thanks to two double 45 DCOE Weber carburetors.

The Alpine A310 presentation and models

The car was presented at the Geneva Motor Show in 1971. The A310 prototype had grilles over the rear window; but they did not come into production. Early models had an NACA duct near the window on top of the left front fender, later four-cylinder cars got two closer to the front of the car.

The cheaper A1976 SX was presented in 310. This model has an 95 horsepower version of the 1647 cc four in line and the simpler interior of the Renault 16 / 17s. The four-cylinder models of the A310 were produced between 1971-1976. They were larger, heavier but no more powerful than the illustrious A110s. That is why the four-cylinder A310 was generally seen as under-motorized

The Alpine A 310 was hard to make

The basis of the new Alpine was a strong chassis of tubeless steel tubes, covered with a fiberglass panel. Like the tragically flopped DeLorean, which used the same PRV powertrain, the engine was in the longitudinal direction at the rear and sent its power to the rear wheels via a five-speed manual gearbox.

The driving position was low and sporty, with the front wheel arches pushing the passengers' feet to the center of the car. The A310 was labor intensive to make. The production time per car was 130 hours. Although many parts of the A310 were understandably from the Renault stocks, the wheelhouse came from the Peugeot 504, while the direction indicators were actually intended for Simca's 1301.

The restyled version of Opron

In 1976, the A310 was restyled by Robert Opron and equipped with the more powerful, newly developed 90 degrees 2664 cc V6 PRV engine. The later V6 also received a black plastic rear spoiler. It did its job but had a disruptive influence on the beautiful lines of the A310. With 150 hp under the hood, the A310 PRV V6 was the 220 km / h fast flagship of Renault. The whole design of the car made him look like Porsche's 911 in terms of driving behavior. Fast, but sometimes insidious.

Six-cylinder sold well

The six-cylinder engine did a lot of good sales. Sales even doubled compared to the four-cylinder models. But because the concept was not fully developed during the production period, the A310 never became the dreamed-up 911 killer. Most A310s were sold in their home country. In 1979 the record number of 782 copies found new owners.

From model year 1981 the rear suspension became identical to that of the Renault 5 Turbo with center engine.

Alpine A310 V6 (1976-1980)

For the later models (1983-1984) of the A310, a “Pack GT” was developed which was inspired by the Group 4 A310 racing cars, with thicker wheel arches and larger spoilers at the front and rear. Nearly 30 more Alpine A310 V6 Pack GT kit Boulogne were also built. In those cars, the PRV V6 had grown to 2,9 liters and had been tuned by Alpine with triple Weber 42DCNF carburettors bringing the power to 193 horsepower.

Alpine A310

We found our photo model en route at Stefcars in Meerhout, Belgium

 

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4 comments

  1. An acquaintance had one.
    Made up of 2 flattened alpines.
    Later they also had it half flat again on the German Autobahn.
    And fixed again, and sold

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