The Alpine Vision sports car was revealed this year which would bring about the return of Alpine as a car brand under Renault. What people don’t know is that it had a twin car which was codenamed C120. It never went beyond the design phase and the polystyrene model is still in a shed.
In 2012, Caterham bought 50% stake in Alpine which is a brand owned by Renault. The Alpine brand has not been used since 1995 and the partnership with Caterham was meant to resurrect the brand.
The joint venture was intended to produce affordable sports cars for both Alpine and Caterham.
The venture between the two car manufacturers was the C120 and the Alpine Vision. Like the Vision, the C120 was a mid-engined sports coupe and would have housed something like the 1.6-litre four cylinder engine in the Vision. The C120 shared 85% of its parts with the Vision though Caterham intended to tweak the engine and suspension to their standards.
Even the car design is identical. The profile and even the front headlights are the same in both cars. The difference can be seen on the sides and rear of the C120. The Caterham featured a much sleeker design than the Vision.
So why didn’t the Caterham C120 see production?
The reason is that Caterham could not keep up with the investment of Renault. Being the smaller company, the cost of producing the car was taxing for Caterham. They simply did not have enough resources to go into the tooling phase which would have needed a sizeable investment.
The Renault – Caterham partnership was dissolved when Renault bought back the 50% stake in Alpine. Renault continued the project on its own and the Alpine Vision was born. The Caterham C120 was left as a polystyrene model and stashed away.
Perhaps we will see the C120 come to life in the future. It would be interesting to have a proper sports car from Caterham if only to see what they can do with it. For now, we can only hope they find the right partner to make the project work.
Images via Top Gear.
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