Renault to revive Alpine, to produce low cost sports cars
It is where Nissan has planned to rebuild its Datsun brand, its partner Renault has also decided to revive Alpine brand. Albeit for a different purpose. Where Nissan wishes to bring in low cost cars in high volume markets such as India, Renault wishes to realize its sports car dreams with the Alpine brand. Both the parent and its ally Alpine has entered into an alliance to develop sports car. Notably, the French car maker has been a failure in selling Formula One cars such as Renault Laguna and Renault Vel Satis besides Renault Wind car. Now with the Alpine brand, Renault wishes that it could gain presence in the sports car segment.
Meanwhile, desperate to have its say in sports cars, Renault will be developing a high end sports car with Caterham which is the UK based sports car maker. These new cars will be ready for sale by 2016. At the press conference held recently, the chiefs of the three car companies have reiterated their faith that the joint production of the Alpine road cars and Caterham cars will be making available sports cars to more and more people at lower price and this will help them realize the dream of driving a sports car without paying much. Notably, it is Ferrari and McLaren that are the dominant sports car makers and all those F1 derived cars available in the market are expensive. Whereas the one developed by Reanult-Alpine and Renault-Caterham will be able to cater to mass appeal.
Reports suggest that the Alpine-Renault sports car will be priced somewhere around €35,000 which is far less than entry level Ferrari California which starts at € 185,000. Thus the revival of the Alpine brand after 1994 when it was shutdown will not only make sports car dream come true but it will also help produce F1 road cars at low price.
Shekhar
Thursday, November 08, 2012
Renault can't do well in super sports or luxury car segment in Indian auto mania just like BMW, Mercedes Benz, Auto and so on. And the new strategy of the company will take too much time. I think it will become debut for the company.