Alpine A390 review

There are two distinct versions of the A390, the GT and the GTS, but there’s only one battery pack size of 89kWh usable, which keeps things simple for the buyer. The story with the A390 is a bit more complicated than that, though. The Renault Group has been working to bring battery production to France and reduce reliance on far eastern countries. For the GT, the cells are manufactured in Poland by LG, whereas the GTS’s cells are made in France by Verkor.

Thanks to different chemistry (still NMC, but with more nickel), the GTS’s battery can also take higher current. That applies in both directions, so the GTS both charges faster than the GT (150kW vs 190kW), and puts more power to the motors.

Those motors are a defining aspect of the A390, because, like the Tesla Model S Plaid and Maserati Granturismo Folgore, the A390 has three motors – one at the front, two at the back - for fully asymmetrical four-wheel drive. A third, separately excited, wound-rotor-style drive motor (without permanent magnets) powers the front axle. 

In the less powerful, 396bhp GT version (the version we’ve done the performance testing on), each motor is rated to produce 132bhp, and while the front motor is slightly torquier than each at the rear, the combination of the two at the rear wheels puts almost two-thirds of the car’s motive thrust at its rear axle. In the upper-level, 463bhp GTS version, meanwhile, each motor is rated for 154bhp, but the potential torque distribution is similar to that of the GT.

Alpine has worked closely with Michelin on the tyres. As a result, all A390 run on one of two tyre options. The standard wheel on the GT is a 20in alloy, which always comes with Alpine-specific Pilot Sport EV tyres. Upgrade to the 21in wheels (which happens automatically if you pick the GTS in the UK) and you get Pilot Sport 4Ss (again Alpine-specific), which trade some of that efficiency for grip and response.

Suspension isn’t quite Alpine-typical. Jean Rédélé was experimenting with double-wishbone suspension (useful for keeping camber angle consistent throughout greater wheel travel ranges) as early as the 1950s, and the modern A110 uses it front and rear. But the A390 uses strut-type suspension up front and a multi-link axle at the rear, just like its platform relations do; and it depends on Alpine’s particular tuning and on hydraulic suspension bumpstops for a point of difference. Alpine keeps it simple in other areas too: there’s no four-wheel steering and the dampers are passive for the most natural feel.

Lightness has also been a core Alpine strength, and it’s another reason to raise an eyebrow here. Our test car weighed in at 2156kg in running order, distributed almost exactly 50:50 front to rear - but making it only 5kg lighter than the Kia EV6 GT we tested in 2023 and nearly 140kg heavier than the last dual-motor Tesla Model Y we tested.

But there’s simply too much mass to keep tabs on here, and too much vertical and lateral recalcitrance about the body control, to ever let the car’s bulk seem to breathe easy over its wheels at a brisk pace, as a great Alpine’s should.

A fairly fast-paced steering system and a wheelbase that’s quite short by class standards promise agility through tighter bends, and the A390 certainly commits to those bends with a some enthusiasm.

There’s plenty of grip and turn-in response, regardless of which tyre option you select. However, the steering is very light, with a glassy sub-limit feel and rather nervous around the straight-ahead. Some testers enjoyed this eagerness, others found it simply too twitchy. In this respect, we preferred the 21in Pilot Sport 4S tyre option, which adds some welcome meat to the steering and makes it easier to place the car accurately.

Regardless of tyre option, from the turn-in phase onwards, the A390’s underlying chassis balance seems to be quite dull, and its torque vectoring seems to have limited capacity to really make it rotate through the apex under power

Track notes - 3 stars

It was with some interest that we took to the handling circuits in the A390 – first Horiba MIRA’s in the GT, then the Circuito di Vairano in the GTS, expecting a showing comparable with – possibly even better than – that of Hyundai’s mould-breaking Ioniq 5 N. The car fell some way short of those expectations, however.

Outright body control isn’t the problem: the A390 controls roll and pitch consistently well. Michelin Pilot Sport tyres give it plenty of lateral grip and don’t seem to be prone to overheating, taking track treatment well. While the soft, long-travel brake pedal feel isn’t the stuff of a keen driver’s waking dreams, the brakes themselves resist fade well and have enough power.

Once into the corner, however, the A390 demands a very particular driving style, one which, contrary to the promises of sophisticated torque vectoring, is reminiscent more of old-school 4WD cars than modern fully-variable systems.

On a track, because the cornering loads are much higher than on the road, the steering starts to communicate better. Because there’s more space, and no oncoming traffic, it’s easier to play with weight transfer. The A390 responds very well to trailbraking, which you can use to set up the car going into a corner and neutral-steer through on the power.

However, as soon as you apply any opposite lock, the car’s brain interprets this as wanting to come out of a slide and it shifts power away from the outside rear wheel and to the front motor, pulling you out. This means that, as a driver, you don’t just have to account for physics, but also the car’s whims, which is a world away from the natural and intuitive A110.

Alpine’s engineers say that all of this is deliberate: it’s not set up for sideways hooliganism, but to feel lighter than it is, and be stable and subtly agile even on uneven and slippery surfaces. Which is admirable, but in the absence of an exciting engine, the option of a bit of sideways hooliganism does add involvement. The genius of the Ioniq 5N is that you can turn it on and off.