Alpine

At the 1971 Geneva Motor Show the Alpine A 310 was introduced. Despite its aggressive styling with six headlights, the car was considered underpowered with its four-cylinder 1,605cc Renault 17 TS engine. The basis of the A 310 was a tubular steel backbone chassis with a fiberglass body. The A 310 was labor-intensive, having been developed for small-scale artisanal production - a car took 130 hours to build from start to finish. While many components of the A 310 came from Renault, others are more surprising - the steering rack is from the Peugeot 504, while the turn signals are Simca 1301 units.

In 1976 the A 310 was restyled by Robert Opron and fitted with the more powerful and newly developed 2,664cc V6 engine, developed for the Renault 30, Volvo 264 and Peugeot 604. Initially, sales quadrupled, but lack of further development tapered off consumer interest. Sales were predominantly in France, with 781 cars sold in its home market in 1979, its best year. in 1984 - the final year of production - only 663 cars had been built.