ALPINE GETS A SENSE OF PURPOSE
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Everyone loves the Alpine A110, the lightweight coupe that nods to the ’60s original of the same name while offering serious competition for the Porsche Cayman. Unfortunately, hardy anyone buys the Alpine A110. It’s been a fun couple of years, but it was never going to last. Now Alpine has been given a job description by de Meo. There’s some fun stuff in there, for sure, but also a clear-ish strategy and a timeline for turning a serious profit.
So what was the Renault F1 team is now the Alpine F1 team. Renault Sport still exists, and now comes under the control of the same boss as Alpine. This boss was going to be Cyril Abiteboul, who ran the F1 team for six years, but he departed immediately before de Meo’s big announcement and was replaced by Renault insider Laurent Rossi.
Alpine’s road cars will be all-electric. There will be an electric replacement for the A110, and it will be developed with help from Lotus (but all will use Alliance platforms). There will be an electric hot hatch and a sporty electric crossover. While the Renault brand is targeting the ‘modern mainstream’ buyer and Dacia is sticking with going big on budget, Alpine is aiming for petrolheads ready to go EV.
If an F1 team seems an odd fit with an otherwise EV brand, Renault is keen to stress the technology transfer from track to road in terms of energy management, materials, data transfer, aero, braking and much more.
It’s quite a contrast to another electric-only part of Groupe Renault, the new Mobilize brand. While there will be four new vehicles coming out wearing a Mobilize badge – including the car-share-focused EZ-1, a neat two-seater linked to a battery-swap scheme – don’t think of Mobilize as a car manufacturer. It’s about mobility, energy and data, and is braced to head off in non-automotive directions.
There are also plans to create vast recycling facilities, where old batteries can be revitalised and old diesel cars repurposed for a greener future use.
The roaring success of Dacia has turned out to be a double-edged sword. Bought by Renault in 1999, the Romanian car maker has done nothing but grow, with the Sandero and Duster established as Europe’s best-selling car and SUV respectively among private buyers.
And this is a problem why, exactly? Because these thousands of Duster and Sandero sales are not high-margin transactions (although they do a great job of spreading R&D and manufacturing costs, given the amount of crossover with Clio, Captur and beyond). And because the Renault and Dacia brands in some markets compete with each other, while neglecting other segments.
That’s changing. While the Renault brand is getting more chic, more premium, more electric, Dacia is sticking firmly to its roots as a big-value, no-nonsense, customer-led operation.
There will be seven Dacia launches by 2025, starting with the just-arrived
Sandero and Sandero Stepway. The Duster will get a facelift, while there’s a new Logan on the way, plus the electric Spring. But the big news is Dacia’s Bigster concept, built on the same platform as the Sandero but much longer – more like the size of a Nissan X-Trail.
Says Dacia design director Alejandro Mesonero-Romanos: ‘The Dacia Bigster Concept epitomises the evolution of the brand. Essential, with a touch of cool and an outdoor spirit.’
The new masterplan pairs Dacia with Lada, which has been controlled by Renault since 2012 but has stayed focused on Russia. The Niva – an icon of Soviet-era Lada – will be reborn in 2024 with a boxy style that carries a hint of Suzuki Jimny, again riding on the CMF-B platform. No word yet on whether it will come to the UK, although Renault says Lada will definitely expand beyond Russia. But if de Meo has learnt the lessons of the past, it shouldn’t end up stealing sales from Dacia…