The Alpine A310 V6
turns fifty

Fifty years of the V6, celebrated by an electric car

On 12 October 2026, at the Paris Motor Show, Alpine pulled the cover off a sharp-edged silver concept: the A310 Vision. On stage, the brand explained the name: ‘It is a tribute to the Alpine A310, because this year is the 55th anniversary of that model and also the 50th anniversary of the V6 version.’ The A310 was born in 1971 with a four-cylinder; its V6 version, the first Alpine to receive the PRV V6, is fifty years old.

The Vision, for its part, is electric: on the same stage, Alpine talked about the sound of an ‘electric sports car’, built from the natural harmonics of its motor. No V6 under that bonnet. All the more reason to go back to the one from 1976 — and to dig out an archive.

December 1982: Auto moto tests the A310

On Saturday 4 December 1982, TF1's Auto moto programme devoted a 2 min 48 report to the Alpine A310 V6. The commentary set it straight away as a ‘direct competitor of the Porsche 924’ that ‘carries on its career’: 1,200 cars leave the Dieppe factory every year.

The report presents a brand-new option: widened wings, oversized tyres, wheels the commentator finds ‘absolutely superb’ and a sill extension underlining the bottom of the body — the car ‘gains in aggressiveness and virility, above all visually’. The mechanicals do not change.

Then the tour. Under the front bonnet, two small bags fit next to the fuel tank and the electric inflator for the spare wheel. The engine cover opens from inside the car. The windows and the two door mirrors are electric, ‘very, very practical’; the dashboard, on the other hand, ‘is getting a bit dated’. In the back, two occasional seats or room for luggage; all around, a laminated polyester body. The verdict: ‘a beautiful object, pleasant to drive, very fast’.

At the La Châtre circuit, in the rain, the racing driver Cathy Muller takes the wheel of the standard version. Her first impressions, after a few laps in the wet: ‘a very sound car, very easy to drive’, easy to control despite a slippery track. Only one complaint, the driving position: being very tall, she would like the wheel closer to her or higher. The engine? ‘An engine that pulls quite well’, with ‘lots of torque’. The gearbox? ‘No problem at all.’ The report closes on two figures: 225 km/h, 128,000 francs.

‘The good old V6 from the R30’

On the engine, the commentary takes one sentence: ‘the good old V6 from the R30, 150 horsepower with special pistons’. It is indeed the 2,664 cc PRV V6 — 88 mm bore, 73 mm stroke —, in a version of Alpine's own: the Renault-Alpine type 112-730, fed by two Solex carburettors, a single-choke 34 TBIA and a twin-choke 35 CEEI. Its 10.1:1 compression ratio is the highest of every engine in our Library; the fuel-injected Z7V of the Renault 30 TX makes do with 9.2:1. The result: 150 bhp DIN at 6,250 rpm and 20.8 m.daN at 3,500 rpm.

Alpine never stamped an engine code of its own: the 112-730 is a type number, and the A310 is one of the seven road cars to have received a carburettor PRV. The engine sits in the rear overhang: fully dressed, it weighs about 152 kg, and 225 kg with the gearbox. In the PRV brochure, the A310 V6 claims 225 km/h and 7.8 s from 0 to 62 mph.

From the A310 to the A610, Alpine's PRV line

The A310 of the test opens a line of four PRV-powered Alpines, which the engine brochure lines up in a column. The GTA succeeds it with two engines, the 2.8-litre naturally aspirated and the 2.5 turbo; the A610 crowns the line, and in 1995 closes the brand's PRV era.

SOURCE: DOUVRIN PRV BROCHURE · MANUFACTURER'S FIGURES

How we made the video

The Auto moto test was put back online by Automoto's Facebook page in June 2025, where it passed 238,000 views — but re-edited vertically, for phones, with a title burnt into the bottom of the picture. The original 4:3 version is kept at the INA, the French broadcast archive, in TF1's collection, and is open only to professionals. So we reframed the vertical version in 16:9, shot by shot, above the burnt-in title: the window sits low for the cars on the track, in the middle for the details, high for the driver at the wheel. The picture stays soft: it is a low-definition copy.

The original commentary is intact. The film opens with our channel's intro, ‘Le V à 90°’, and carries on with the official footage from Alpine and Renault Group at the Motor Show: the unveiling of the A310 Vision, then two shots from 1982 and their 2026 answer — the rear, the front —, under Alpine's sentence on the fifty years of the V6.

The 1982 footage remains the property of TF1, the 2026 footage that of Alpine and Renault Group. The video is on PRV Concept's YouTube channel: subscribe so you don't miss the next ones. And if you drive an A310 V6, or are restoring one, tell us about it in the Alpine A310 section of the forum.