Alpine A110 Légende GT
Our 2021 GT meets its 2022 successor. Can we spot the difference?
NO, YOU’RE NOT SEEING DOUBLE. THIS month our 2021 A110 Légende GT (the matt grey car at the rear of the picture) was joined by a 2022 A110 GT (the glossy grey one at the front) enabling us to check what progress, if any, has been made by Alpine’s recent round of updates.
The first difference that jumps out is the new software for the 7-inch touchscreen. Using the old system is a bit like discovering your first ever satnav in the back of a drawer and firing it up for a trip down memory lane: all 8-bit graphics and badly thought-out menus. The new system (pictured) is still far from fancy, but its simplicity is part of its appeal, making it intuitive to use from your first encounter. Kinda like the car it resides in, then.
Apple Carplay and Android Auto connectivity are now included too, but I’d imagine such things don’t make or break a purchase decision for your typical prospective Alpine customer, nor the addition of a vanity mirror to the passenger sunvisor (outrageous! Think of the weight!) or the new cubby that replaces the old car’s cupholder, so let’s move swiftly on.
No changes are claimed for the chassis, and indeed none are apparent, but the 2-litre turbocharged engine has been tickled, with power up by 8bhp to 296bhp and torque rising 15lb ft to 251lb ft. If you’d driven the 288bhp car in the last few hours you might detect moments when the new GT feels a fraction keener upon applying full throttle at mid-to-high revs, but the gains certainly aren’t as obvious as the drop in the claimed 0-62 time, from 4.4sec to 4.2, would lead you to believe. A pair of back-to-back launch-control starts on track supported this, with the 2022 GT passing a quarter-mile(ish) marker at an indicated 107mph, and the 2021 car at… 105mph. From the driver’s seat the two runs were indistinguishable.
Far more easily identified, yet not advertised, is a change to the active sports exhaust, which is considerably noisier on the newer car. It’s no louder in its general note, but where in Sport mode the Légende GT sometimes mimics a ripple of distant fireworks, the new car fires out an attentionseeking pap-pap-pap! on every single downshift, manual or auto. This may suit a bewinged A110 S in Fire Orange, but on a GT finished in demure grey it seems rather out of place. And just to confirm, the active exhaust is standard, not an option.
Overall, though, the changes to the new GT are mostly for the better, but also mostly modest. Tellingly, as soon as I got back into the 2021 car I didn’t miss anything offered by its replacement.
In other news, the first longer trips in our long-termer have revealed that it is particularly susceptible to the effects of wind gusts, requiring continual gentle corrections that can become tiresome. When it’s not blowing in the wind, however, the Légende happily munches the miles, with a comfortable ride (if not quite to the magic carpet standards of the our Mclaren GT), good visibility, and mid-40s mpg easily attained. It’s certainly whet the appetite for more lengthy journeys in our long-termer, specifically biting the bullet and using it for a holiday. Although that invites the age-old sports car conundrum of luggage capacity, or lack thereof, and solutions for expanding it. I’d better start investigating.
Date acquired February 2022 Total mileage 6578 Mileage this month 1192 Costs this month £0 mpg this month 34.9