Alpine A108

Alpine A108 at a glance

The A108 belongs to our Renault catalogue, because Alpine is part of Renault today and the car was built from Renault parts. The whole story of the Dieppe company is told in our history of Alpine from the A106 to the A290, and later sports cars can be set side by side in the car comparison tool.

Why the car is called A108

Alpine's first production car, the A106, took its number from the first three digits of the Renault 4CV homologation code. The new car used the running gear of the Dauphine, whose homologation number was 1090, so by the same logic it should have been called the A109. Wikipedia explains the choice of 108 instead by the number of parts the car carried over from the A106. German Wikipedia adds that the Renault codes R1090 and R1092 were simply not used for the name.

A108 production timeline

Development and production history

Jean Rédélé ran a Renault dealership in Dieppe and raced Renaults himself. His A106 of 1955 had shown that a light glass-fibre body on 4CV mechanicals could win class honours, but the 4CV was ageing. The Dauphine, launched in 1956, offered a more modern engine and gearbox, and the A108 was the car built around them. It was shown in Paris in autumn 1957, yet the volumes stayed small at first: according to Wikipedia, the older A106 remained Alpine's main product until 1960.

The range grew in steps. Michelotti's open cabriolet came first and closely resembled the A106 cabriolet. A coupé with a fixed roof followed in 1959, of which German Wikipedia counts only 12 to 15 cars. The same year brought a four-seat 2+2 coupé, bodied and designed by Chappe et Gessalin and sold as a "Grand Tourisme". From 1959 Rédélé's own company R.D.L. made most of the bodies.

The decisive change came in 1960. Philippe Charles reworked the front with the headlamps set into the wings behind Plexiglas covers, a shape tested in the Citroën wind tunnel. He then added a fastback roof inspired by an Alfa Romeo coupé. The result was the Berlinette, first seen at the Tour de France automobile and shown officially at the 1960 Paris Motor Show. It replaced the original coach and was sold until 1965.

Design and engineering

The A108 follows the recipe that Alpine used for the next two decades: a very light plastic body, a rear-mounted Renault engine and a tubular frame. The cabriolet and 2+2 of 1960 introduced the "beam and backbone" chassis, with a wheelbase 70 mm longer than before. Wikipedia notes that this chassis principle stayed in use on Alpine sports cars until the A110 was phased out in 1977, and the faired-in headlamp front of 1960 lasted just as long.

Size was modest even by the standards of the time. The car was 3.70 to 3.78 m long, 1.45 m wide and only 1.27 m high, and the kerb weight was 530 to 600 kg depending on body. The 2+2 coupé weighed 595 kg. A low weight and a small frontal area, not big power, were what made the A108 fast.

Engine and drivetrain

Every A108 engine is a Renault overhead-valve four-cylinder from the Dauphine family, mounted behind the rear axle and driving the rear wheels. The sources agree on the displacements but not on all outputs, so both figures are given where they differ.

The 904 cc unit was prepared by the engine tuner Marc Mignotet. Gearboxes were manual with three, four or five speeds. Neither source gives torque or a top speed, so none is quoted here.

Alpine A108 specifications

Alpine A108 variants and derivatives

Willys Interlagos and other licence builds

The A108 was the first Alpine to be built abroad. Under an agreement with Willys-Overland do Brasil, it was produced in São Bernardo do Campo near São Paulo as the Willys Interlagos. It was shown at the 1961 São Paulo Motor Show and offered as a berlineta, coupé and convertible. Wikipedia records 822 cars built from 1962 to 1966 and a successful racing career in Brazil.

In Spain, Manuel Jiménez Alfaro built Alpines under licence at FASA. The first FASA-Alpines matched the 1960 A108, the later ones the A110, and they carried a modified version of the Alpine "A" badge.

In service: racing and legacy

The Berlinette took over from the A106 coach as Alpine's competition car and was used mainly in French national motorsport and in the Tour de France automobile of the early 1960s. Its importance lies less in its own results than in what followed. In 1961 Alpine built the first A110 Berlinette, which kept the A108 body but adapted it to the Renault 8 engine and its running gear, as L'argus describes it. That car won the 1973 World Rally Championship for Alpine-Renault with six wins in thirteen rounds.

Wikipedia sums up the A108's role as the car that turned Alpine into a mainstream, if still low-volume, manufacturer. The tubular backbone, the plastic body and the faired headlamps all began here.

Preservation and collecting today

The A108 is much rarer than the A110. Exact Dieppe production figures are not published in the sources used here; only the 12 to 15 fixed-roof coupés and the fewer than 100 long-chassis cabriolets and 2+2s are documented. Buyers should check the identity of a car carefully, because many Berlinettes were raced and rebuilt, and because Brazilian Interlagos and Spanish FASA cars look almost the same as French ones. The chassis tubes deserve the closest look, since the glass-fibre body hides corrosion on the steel frame. More classic cars of the period are collected in our classic car section.