I had followed Alpine's rebirth with great interest. When Alpine A110-50 concept car was introduced in 2012 I had just bought myself a Renault Megane RS 265 Trophy which I liked very much. From my perspective Renault Sport was starting to become new Alpine and since my Megane RS was so good I had great hopes that the same people who were behind great Renault Sport models would be able to produce something good in the form of an Alpine.

When the production version of Alpine A110 was introduced in 2017 I read a lot of A110 reviews and watched many A110 related videos. Based on everything I read and saw the car seemed very much to my liking. Light, agile and excellent handling - all qualities which I appreciated. I've always liked light-weight cars and I was impressed by the fact that Alpine had managed to produce a sports car which would meet all the modern safety requirements and weigh only 1,100 kg.

What I also like about Alpine A110 is the way it looks. It is a little bit retro and it is easy to see some features in design which are reminiscent of the original A110. On the other hand car looks very modern - and to my eyes beautiful.

One thing I'm not particularly keen is the automated DCT transmission. I would prefer to have manual transmission but that is not available to A110. I've owned cars for over 30 years but the A110 will be my first non-manual car. It will also be my second rear-wheel drive car - I've owned 2 litre Ford Sierra in the beginning of the nineties.

Usually when I'm buying a car I consider few different cars and end up with something. This time it was a little different since basically it was an Alpine A110 or nothing. Closest competitor to A110 is perhaps Porsche 718 Cayman which most likely is very good car. It just doesn't do anything for me, and even if I would've liked Cayman it would've been out of my reach. That is because even though base model Cayman and A110 are closely matched in price on many countries, in Finland much higher CO2 value of the Porsche means much higher prices in Finland compared to A110 due to our registration tax system.

At some point few years ago I had considered Lotus Elise as one possible car for me. However there were two main things that had put me off purchasing an Elise. First of all I'm quite tall (191 cm) and as far as I understand Elise is not very comfortable car for taller persons. Secondly, my cars have always been daily-drivers and even though I have owned some cars which most people would not dream of using daily, I thought that Elise would be too spartan to be used as a daily-driver. The Alpine A110 seemed like a good middle-ground to me. Not as light as Elise but still very light compared to most other cars and at the same time having reasonable amount of modern comforts for an old man like me. Oh, and a previous Managing Director of Alpine was 2 m tall and he had made sure that even taller persons would fit in the A110.

One thing that was a slight disappointment to me when A110 was introduced was its price. I had hoped that the first model of the reborn Alpine would be something that would compete in price with the likes of Mazda MX-5 etc.. Instead Alpine went head-to-head with Porsche 718 Cayman. The pricing of an A110 doesn't seem unreasonable at all considering what you get with the price but for me the pricing meant that even though I liked the car very much it was not realistic for me to buy it - at least for a while.

Even though I didn't have the required funds available in the short-term, that didn't mean that I couldn't buy an A110 sometimes in the future. Better start saving!

Why buy a sports car in the first place, you might ask? Well, because I like cars and enjoy driving and owning nice cars...and because I can. There is no rational justification for buying a sports car like there is no rational justification for buying big, heavy and ugly SUVs which people seem to like very much nowadays.

One small twist in the plot was that the only Alpine dealer in the Nordic countries is in Stockholm, Sweden. So a visit to dealer to see and test drive the car was not so easy to arrange. That didn't stop me wanting the car at all.

Since there are no Alpine dealers in Finland an A110 is a rare car around here. My car will however not be the only new A110 in Finland. Our government publishes lots of open source data including data on all cars registered in Finland. The latest published car registration data at the moment (March 2022) is from the end of June 2021 and based on that data there is one new A110 registered in Finland at that time. That specific car is a 2019 car which has been imported to Finland as a used car in 2020. It is registered in Helsinki and the colour of that car is grey.

The plan for the Alpine is that it would be my daily-driver for the times of the year when winter tyres are not necessary. Where I live that means approximately half of the year, normally from sometimes in April to October. I'm planning to keep my current car 2019 Fiesta ST as my winter car. Fiesta will also be called to duty when I need to transport more stuff.

Next: Buying and importing the car.