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A few months on from the launch of the Alpine A290 Rallye customer competition car, Alpine has pulled the wraps off the Alpine Lacoste A290 Rallye — a rather unexpected take on its small electric sports car. Dubbed “Beware of the Crocodile”, this one-off was born out of a collaboration with Lacoste.
Behind the Alpine Lacoste A290 Rallye lies, above all, a marketing exercise bringing together two brand ambassadors: Pierre Gasly, BWT Alpine Formula One Team driver turned Lacoste face, and Pierre Niney, long-standing ambassador for the crocodile brand. Both appear in a short film titled “Le Test”, released alongside this collaboration.
More than a mere special edition, the Alpine Lacoste A290 Rallye shines a light on two French brands with a shared sporting heritage, while putting the A290 Rallye — Alpine’s first fully electric competition car — squarely in the spotlight.
The Alpine Lacoste A290 Rallye is built on a genuine competition car
Unlike the many showcars that amount to little more than styling exercises, the Alpine Lacoste A290 Rallye rests on thoroughly solid technical foundations: the Alpine A290 Rallye, revealed in July 2025 at the Rallye Rouergue Aveyron Occitanie.
Developed by Alpine Racing at Viry-Châtillon and assembled at the Manufacture Alpine Jean Rédélé in Dieppe, this version marks the debut of Alpine’s first electric competition car offered to customers.
Its technical specification remains unchanged:
- 220 bhp (160 kW) electric motor;
- 300 Nm of torque;
- 52 kWh battery;
- front-wheel drive with ZF limited-slip differential;
- competition-specific reduction gear;
- ALP Racing Suspension dampers;
- Michelin Pilot Sport A tyres;
- uprated braking with six-piston front callipers and hydraulic handbrake.
The cabin meets FIA standards throughout, with a welded roll cage, Sabelt bucket seats and six-point harnesses.
Alpine has also addressed one of the most persistent criticisms levelled at electric competition cars: the absence of meaningful sound. An onboard generator produces a bespoke acoustic signature that evolves with road speed and motor load, giving the driver both feedback and a sense of drama that pure silence simply cannot.
Priced at €59,990 ex-VAT, the Alpine A290 Rallye is intended as the centrepiece of a customer motorsport programme backed by Alpine itself, complete with technical support, charging infrastructure and a network of Alpine Stores to anchor the whole operation.
A showcar with seriously dramatic bodywork
For this collaboration, the designers went quite a long way with the body.
Widened tracks, pronounced arches, an extravagant diffuser, a roof air intake, a sizeable rear wing and exposed carbon elements combine to give the Alpine Lacoste A290 Rallye a considerably more theatrical presence than the car it’s based on.
The theme draws directly from the Lacoste crocodile. Outside, the bodywork wears a slightly blue-tinged white suggestive of ice and mountain landscapes; inside, the cabin plunges into an all-red world intended to evoke the inside of the famous reptile’s mouth.
The seats are trimmed in Lacoste’s iconic petit piqué fabric, the embroidery is the work of the Potencier atelier, and several 3D-printed components help keep weight in check. The designers even hid 290 crocodiles across various details of the car — a neat touch for those who take the time to look.
A showcar first and foremost
It would be surprising, however, to read too much into this as a preview of a future production variant.
Everything points to the Alpine Lacoste A290 Rallye being exactly what it looks like: a showcar, built to illustrate the partnership between Alpine and Lacoste and to amplify the A290 Rallye’s public profile. Its deliberately over-the-top styling belongs to the world of brand communications rather than any realistic study for a saleable model.
A limited edition inspired by the collaboration isn’t out of the question, of course — but if it were ever to materialise, it would almost certainly adopt a far more restrained presentation than this one-off.
A timely boost for electric rallying
The collaboration also serves to put the A290 Rallye programme back in the conversation.
After its official reveal at the Rallye Rouergue in 2025, the car continued its demonstration tour at Goodwood and the Rallye Mont-Blanc Morzine. Alpine is now pushing to build a genuine customer competition ecosystem around this electric machine.
The real question, though, is whether enthusiasts will buy into this new formula.
Formula E gradually found its audience, true enough — but rallying remains viscerally attached to combustion engines and the soundtrack that comes with them. This shift to electric is unlikely to win over every motorsport fan. That said, the Alpine Lacoste A290 Rallye has at least succeeded in keeping the A290 Rallye in the headlines and sparking debate around this fledgling discipline.
Alpine’s agenda doesn’t stop there. From 9 to 12 July 2026, the Goodwood Festival of Speed will offer a rather more strategically significant moment for the Dieppe marque, as it presents the development mule of the future electric A110 in public for the first time — as we covered in a recent article.
A far weightier appointment for the brand’s future — while the Alpine Lacoste A290 Rallye remains, in the end, a styling exercise designed to keep enthusiasts entertained and Alpine’s name in circulation ahead of its most iconic model’s reinvention.
Source: Alpine Cars
