Concepts I want to see on the road: The Alpine A110-50

Why show us things like this and not give them to us? Why, why?!

Before Renault's Alpine brand gave us the lovely and faithfully retro-looking A110, design chief Laurens van den Acker's team presented us a concept that had much more 2010s Renault about it – but in a futuristic and muscly supercar form.

I'm into the A110 – especially the swansong R Ultime version – but goddamn I love the 2012 A110-50 concept.

We were robbed when this one never went further. It had the Nissan-based 3.5L V6 from the Mégane Trophy, but imagine it with the VR38DETT!

The A110-50 was preceded by the Dezir concept, which certainly could've served as a production car without many changes and without blurring the line between Renault and Alpine.

It could've stood as Renault's answer to the Peugeot RCZ – but, alas, it was not to be. (Not without a rear window, anyway... the Polestar 4 was still a long way off!)

Why didn't the A110-50, or the 'Dezir', come to production?

Casting my mind back to writing about this so long ago for The Motor Report...

Not to give you a(nother?) reason to hate EVs, but, at that time, Renault was pouring its resources into its the relatively ambitious Z.E. electric vehicle program.

In a difficult market – not all that far removed from the global financial crisis – the expensive, high-priority electrification project was the bigger priority, and a low-volume, niche sports car was simply not a smart distraction from the company's main goal.

Of course, you probably remember, the final roadblock was a failed partnership.

Renault planned to build the new Alpine with British sports marque Caterham to share costs, but the deal shat itself in 2014.

This forced Renault to start the project over, which eventually led to the different, and (slightly) more commercially sensible, Alpine A110 in 2017.

So, we didn't exactly miss out on a nice result, but still...

Still!