Australia's Worst-Selling Car Brand Also Has A Formula 1 Team & More News Here

Australia has a small but very aggressive automotive market that’s seen many profitable worldwide manufacturers enter and shortly exit after lacklustre gross sales in recent times: assume Dodge, Infiniti or Opel. But none of these manufacturers boasts their very own Formula 1 crew… Which makes Alpine relatively particular.

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Not to be confused with Alpina (a BMW tuning home that’s offered by BMW dealerships in Australia that’s additionally not lengthy for this world), Alpine is a French sports activities automotive model that, in its trendy type, is the efficiency division of automotive large Renault.

The Alpine model has a protracted and considerably difficult historical past – first as a tuner, then a producer in its personal proper – and was a barely obscure word in mainstream automotive historical past till Renault determined to revive the model again in 2017 with the Alpine A110, a light-weight 2-door coupé named and styled after the long-lasting A110 berlinetta of the 60s and 70s.

On high of that, Renault rebranded their well-known F1 crew as Alpine final yr – demonstrating how Alpine has morphed into Renault’s sole efficiency division, simply as Mercedes-AMG has turn into for Mercedes-Benz, for instance. With us to date?

The ‘new’ Alpine A110 (in case you can name a automotive that’s been in manufacturing for half a decade already ‘new’) is at the moment the one automotive that Alpine makes, and it’s really an outstanding automotive. Former Top Gear host James May has known as it “the greatest thing to come out of France since the Mouli cheese grater.”

Yet after solely 4 years in the marketplace in Australia, Alpine and the A110 are disappearing. And it’s no thriller why: the Alpine A110 is the worst-selling automobile the nation has seen for a really very long time.

How unhealthy has the Alpine A110’s gross sales been? According to VFACTS, solely 85 models have offered in Australia since its introduction. Ouch. That’s nearly as unhealthy because the gross sales of the Renault Zoe, which was offered right here from 2017 to 2020 and pulled from the market after solely 63 examples had been offered throughout these 3 years.

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2022 has been particularly grim for Alpine, with the model actually solely promoting 1 automotive per 30 days in January, February and March.

In comparability, Lotus – whose light-weight vehicles are similar to the Alpine A110 – offered 18 vehicles in March. Hardly sufficient to set the world on fireplace however nonetheless. Porsche, whose Cayman is one other pure rival for the A110, offered 275 vehicles. For comparability, the best-selling model, Toyota, offered 21,828 vehicles.

To be honest, Alpine’s grim 2022 gross sales figures are largely attributable to the truth that the A110 has been discontinued in Australia, with no new provide forthcoming – sellers are simply promoting what they’ve received left on tons. Once they’re all offered, Alpine will not exist in Australia… At least within the quick time period.

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The A110 is being discontinued due to the introduction of Australian Design Rule 85/00, which requires new vehicles offered right here to have aspect influence airbags – one thing the A110 doesn’t have in an effort to maintain the automotive mild.

“Given only [85] units have sold in Australia since its introduction… it’s not hard to see that there’s no scope for return on the cost of redesigning even part of the A110 purely for the Australian market, especially when most prospective customers likely already have one,” WhichCar explains, including that Australia makes up lower than 1% of Alpine’s world gross sales.

This doesn’t imply the Alpine model will utterly disappear from Australia shores as soon as the A110 is discontinued. Of course, the Alpine F1 Team will maintain coming Down Under for the Australian Grand Prix, and there’s an excellent likelihood we’ll see an Australian driving for the crew within the not-too-distant future: Oscar Piastri, the 2021 Formula 2 World Champion, who’s a part of Renault’s driver academy.

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There’s additionally a next-generation A110 within the works, which can be produced in collaboration with Lotus, characteristic an all-electric drivetrain and can enter manufacturing in 2025. The new Renault 5 EV can also be set to have a performance-oriented Alpine variant.

Still, it’s weird {that a} model that has an F1 crew would find yourself being Australia’s worst-selling automotive maker in current reminiscence.

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