This is the Alpine A290 Beta, something that the brand has announced since 2021, but is finally almost becoming reality. It’s an electric hot hatch based on the Renault 5.
Let’s spend a bit of time decoding the A290 Beta name. The A refers to Alpine of course. The 2 refers to the size, which in this case B-segment seems to be 2. The 90 refers to ‘multipurpose’ vehicles, while 10 will be used for pure sports car bodies. Based that, we suppose if Alpine ever makes a long wheelbase electric gran touring coupe, it will be called A410 or something.
And finally, Beta refers to beta test, which indicates this will still be a concept car close to production instead of a production car. Both the Renault 5 and its Alpine A290 counterpart will probably only see production cars hit the showrooms sometime in 2024.
When we talked about an Alpine-badged go quick Renault 5 back in 2021, the numbers thrown about was 215 horsepower, front wheel drive and a 100 km/h sprint time of about six seconds. We’ll know the finalised numbers when the A290 Beta is unveiled on May 9 2023.
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