If it was the A110’s suitability to everyday use that convinced you to opt for a Légende-spec car, you might not notice too many distinguishing features inside the Légende GT.
Our Mercury Silver test car came with black leather comfort seats with grey stitching – the same seats and colour theme available on a regular Légende – and had the same body-coloured upper door panels and glossy carbonfibre decorative trims as we have seen in other A110s. Special sill plates mark the car out to an extent, as does the numbered plaque at the base of the centre stack, but whatever else there is to say about this car’s interior, you can’t describe it as feeling very fresh or different.
The motorised Sabelt comfort seats are as you would expect your backside to find them, however: well shaped, comfortable and supportive over distance, even if there’s no adjustable lumbar support or extendable cushion. They seat you at a set of well-located primary controls, even if the secondary ones aren’t so well placed. Despite plenty of criticism of them since 2017, Alpine still hasn’t either redesigned or relocated the column-mounted gearshift paddles (which are displaced upwards, out of instinctive reach of your fingers, by the nearby audio remote pod).
Neither has it revisited the car’s wiper and indicator stalk design, which are just the right length to hide away the labelled rotating stalk ends behind the rim of the steering wheel so you have to crank your neck to see if you’ve left the headlights on. The car’s digital instruments remain bright, if a little antiquated-looking in their lack of crispness and definition. The touchscreen infotainment system is similar, and it’s a little hard to penetrate, although rewards with plenty of useful information when you do.
In terms of cargo practicality, the A110 affords less carrying space than, say, a Porsche Cayman, but still a respectable amount allowing for the car’s defining compactness. You can squeeze a couple of helmets or soft holdalls into the boot at the rear, and some shopping or smaller bags into the ‘frunk’ (which still won’t open remotely with the key, Porsche-style, a little annoyingly), but forget about finding room for a bigger flight case anywhere but in the passenger footwell.
The main opportunity to boost the A110s ‘daily-drive capability’ would have probably been to redesign the centre console so as to make the cupholder more accessible, to provide a useful centre armrest, or both. Suffice to say, the Légende GT does neither – but it has a fairly comfortable and averagely practical sports car cockpit in any case.
Alpine A110 Legende GT infotainment & sat-nav
Alpine announced a long-overdue functionality update for the 2022-model-year A110, which gives its 7.0in touchscreen infotainment system smartphone mirroring for Apple and Android handsets, as well as voice recognition. Unfortunately for Alpine A110 Légende GT owners, they are buying a 2021-model-year A110, which instead uses a much less useful device connectivity portal called MySpin. We tried to use it but achieved very little in the process.
The central infotainment screen is small and simply rendered, and a bit hard to fathom – but if you persevere, you will find a broad array of engine and gearbox temperature information can be displayed on it, as well as live chassis dynamics data.
The car’s navigation system is only just about passable; on a £60k car, it should really be easier to program and follow. Our test car had the middle of three available audio systems (the lightweight Focal set-up), which lacked a little for power and full-spectrum detail – but, considering the application, it’s probably still the right choice. DAB reception was inconsistent.
