Our cars: Alpine A110

Warning

Service message has brought up the only real hurdle with running an A110 – the sparse dealer network

Alpine A110 GT

THIRD REPORT A first service isn’t spoiling our fun in French coupé

Steve Sutcliffe

mail@autoexpress.co.uk

JUST after the 11,000th mile ticked over on our Alpine A110 GT’ s odometer, a little message appeared in yellow on the left-hand side of the instrument binnacle. It said a service would be required in 900 miles, at which point I didn ’t think much more about it. I was in Scotland at the time and there wasn ’t much I could do about it up there anyway.

For a couple of weeks afterwards I was here, there and everywhere with work, so I didn ’t have time to get the service done. But as the miles continued to accrue, and I continued to find the A110 a very lovely car to get around in, the mileage went up and the service number continued to fall, until one morning I realised I had just 100 miles left to get it sorted.

So I went online to find my nearest Alpine Centre, put my Hove postcode into the search engine and was somewhat disbelieving to discover it’ s in Orpington, Kent. According to the search engine, that’ s 64 miles away from Hove – hardly up the road, in other words.

I called the dealer and the soonest date they could do was three weeks away. Hmm. They also couldn ’t do a fast turnaround appointment, so asked if I wanted a courtesy car. But that would mean driving to Orpington and back twice in two days, which I didn ’t much fancy, so I agreed to drop it off first thing and just wait.

“It might take most of the day, ” the nice lady said. “That’ s fine, ” I replied, not exactly telling the truth. But then what else am I supposed to do?

The price of the service was £470. Chuck the cost of fuel in to get from Hove to Orpington and back and that’ s £500, which is a fair chunk given that I’ ve done less than 5,000 miles in the car. Hopefully nothing outside the routine work will need seeing to. It occurs next week, so I’ll keep my fingers crossed and report back next time.

In the meantime, the A110 remains an absolute joy to live with every day, even if it does have its limitations when it comes to luggage space and interior packaging. But you know about these things long before you decide to buy a car such as the A110. They are part of the deal you sign up for in the first place.

What you can ’t possibly appreciate until you ’ ve spent some quality time in an A110 GT is just how soothing and comfortable it is on long journeys. Or how delicate and detailed its steering is when you thread it along a decent B-road. Or how economical it can be if you drive it gently (more than 35mpg on most journeys). Or how much attention it attracts wherever it goes.

People like the A110, even though most of them don ’t know what it is, and I really like that about it. Even the car haters can ’t quite bring themselves to dislike it, because it looks so small and inoffensive. As for the people who do know what it is, they want to know all about it, as if it’ s some kind of forbidden fruit.

Me? If anything, I like the A110 even more now than I did when it first arrived, and I was already a very big fan. It’ s just so unusual and has such a broad repertoire of talents, not all of which need to involve a race track or even a fast B-road. I like bumbling around in it almost as much as I do pressing on when the right road appears. Hopefully the ownership experience won ’t take too much of a dent when it’ s serviced.