There is something rather odd about watching the Alpine A290_β on its way up the Hill. Its resemblance to the Renault 5 is obvious, but seeing it make progress in almost complete silence is disorientating. That being said, we’re incredibly excited to see this car on the move at the 2023 Festival of Speed presented by Mastercard.
Video: Alpine A290_β debuts at the 2023 Festival of Speed
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For this is the car that resembles the future of the hot hatch in an electric future. We’ve seen what can be done when four electric motors are slapped onto a streamlined hypercar – see the Pininfarina Battista that also launched on Thursday – but this represents a more consumer-focussed approach.
Early evidence from its dynamic debut on the Hill suggests it will have a good turn of pace, while it looks to have plenty of front-end grip as it takes a bite out of Turn One with tyres squealing. We’ll look forward to seeing whether the speed increases between now and the final runs at the end of the weekend.
We say this car. In fact, this is but the concept that will inform the final production model due on sale in 2024. We can still identify the central driving position of the Alpine A290_β, which will not make it on the eventual non-Beta version. However, you can expect to see much of the exterior style of this car go unchanged.
There has never been an Alpine like this before, and there is still so much we don’t know about the A290_β. There are still no performance numbers yet but the intrigue for us is how well Alpine can engineer it to drive as well as we all want it to.
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