• Great driving position with lots of head- and legroom
• Nicely-designed, with well-judged trim and fittings
• Excellent forward and rear visibility makes it easy to place

How is the quality and layout?

Alpine is owned by Renault, and if we’re honest, this is a pairing that doesn’t conjure up images of quality interiors or well-judged trim material. But the A110 will blow away your preconceptions about French car interiors, because this is a fabulous effort – and all the more impressive considering it’s the last car sold by Alpine was the mid-1990s A610. Even so, you will find a few switches, stalks and dials lifted from lesser Renault products.

Transmission is a simple push-button affair with paddleshifters for those who want to take care of the gearchanges themselves. Again, it’s functional but works very well – and equally, the paddles feel nice to use, even if they don’t have the machined perfection of the Porsche 718 Cayman’s.

Needless to say, the driving position is spot on, with a perfect relationship between wheel, paddleshifters and pedals – and there’s also plenty of room for drivers of all shapes and sizes. As such, that means as a daily driver, the A110 makes more sense than you’d imagine.

Infotainment and tech

The instrumentation is digital and displayed on a large screen in front of the driver. The display changes depending on the drive mode you select, which works especially well in track mode, where all the extraneous gauges are taken away in favour of lap timer and rev counter. It all works very well indeed.

The infotainment set-up is basic and is probably the car’s weakest link truth be told. However, it’s functional – there’s not a lot to complain about here – and it now features Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, so at least you don’t have to look too much at the standard set-up.

Comfort

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• Superb seats offer surprising levels of comfort
• Excellent driving position and visibility
• The GT has the best seats

The Alpine A110 really surprises and delights in this department. For a sports car that references a 1960s rally icon, you might be thinking that it’s going to be an uncomfortable beast. But you couldn’t be further from the truth.

The seats are supportive and a pleasure to sit on, but if you’re blessed with a wider frame, you might struggle to snuggle in between its side bolsters. Of the three, the GT’s seats offer the most comfortable environment including seat heating, but the A110S is surprisingly pleasant even for a long drive. R owners aren’t quite as lucky, with carbon racing seats offering the least padding and a racing harness proving more troublesome than regular seatbelts.