Alpine A110 2022 in Finland
Discussion
Greetings,
I bought a new Alpine A110 from Antwerp, Belgium and picked up the car from there at the end of April this year. The car itself is base model A110 with 252 horsepower, Alpine Blue colour plus few selected options. Therefore nothing extraordinary. Even though the car is not that rare it is quite a rarity in Finland where I'm based since there are only two other new A110's in the country. The nearest Alpine dealer is in Stockholm, Sweden which means that a trip to the nearest dealer will involve a lengthy ferry trip (13 to 18 hours).
A110 has been my daily driver and I have driven approx. 10,000 km during the first driving season. I love the agility of the car and that it is not necessary to drive that fast to enjoy the A110. Only issue with the car so far has been that the optional Alpine telemetrics has been acting up a little bit. Otherwise no issues whatsoever.
Now the car has been put to winter storage.
I have written more detailed stories related to my A110 experiences on my A110 site:
https://pertti.com/en/alpine/
Couple of pics:
Nice lake view near Plön in northern Germany during the trip to pick up the car from Belgium:
Alpine in front of the Lahti ski jumping towers close to where I live:
Sabelt bucket seats are comfier than expected:
A110 at the Sportscar Breakfast Club event in Tuusula, Finland:
I bought a new Alpine A110 from Antwerp, Belgium and picked up the car from there at the end of April this year. The car itself is base model A110 with 252 horsepower, Alpine Blue colour plus few selected options. Therefore nothing extraordinary. Even though the car is not that rare it is quite a rarity in Finland where I'm based since there are only two other new A110's in the country. The nearest Alpine dealer is in Stockholm, Sweden which means that a trip to the nearest dealer will involve a lengthy ferry trip (13 to 18 hours).
A110 has been my daily driver and I have driven approx. 10,000 km during the first driving season. I love the agility of the car and that it is not necessary to drive that fast to enjoy the A110. Only issue with the car so far has been that the optional Alpine telemetrics has been acting up a little bit. Otherwise no issues whatsoever.
Now the car has been put to winter storage.
I have written more detailed stories related to my A110 experiences on my A110 site:
https://pertti.com/en/alpine/
Couple of pics:
Nice lake view near Plön in northern Germany during the trip to pick up the car from Belgium:
Alpine in front of the Lahti ski jumping towers close to where I live:
Sabelt bucket seats are comfier than expected:
A110 at the Sportscar Breakfast Club event in Tuusula, Finland:
Thanks for the replys XOcette and Save the manuals!
XOcette said:
Such an overlooked quality I think. It's one reason I really love my A310 - you can have loads of fun at sensible speeds (and on smaller roads).
I agree with that. I have never driven A310 or the original A110 but I would certainly assume that the sensations on those cars while driving are quite different than in modern cars.Save the manuals said:
It’s a great looking car! I read your blog before getting my previous Megane RS, nice to see that you have upgraded to an A110. Looking forwards to hear more about your ownership experience.
Greetings from Sweden!
It's nice to hear that there are readers who are familiar with my previous cars. The Megane III RS 265 Trophy which I had owned previously was a very good car in my opinion and my experiences with that car were one of the reasons why I had confidence on Alpine A110 even though I had never seen or driven one before I bought mine. As far as I understand lots of same people who have been working for RenaultSport are now involved with reborn Alpine.Greetings from Sweden!
My Alpine was on winter storage for six months and I picked it up from there during Easter. I just did a two-week/3,500 km trip from Finland to continental Europe on the Alpine. The trip combined holiday, servicing the car and work. It was altogether approx. 3,500 kilometres long trip.
(This post is a duplicate post from the Alpine road trip thread on the Alpine section on this forum.)
I wrote a travel story on my Alpine pages which can be found here:
https://www.pertti.com/en/alpine/01c-my-a110-exper...
The trip started with a 30-hour ferry trip from Helsinki (Finland) to Travemünde in Germany.
My Alpine on the ferry with a 911 GT3 Touring. The owner of the GT3 was quite keen on my Alpine.
From there I drove through Germany towards Austria. In Germany I stopped in Seevetal, Bamberg and Nürnberg where I had my Alpine serviced. Then I drove to Munich airport to pick up my stepdaughter. Next step was to drive to Bruck an der Grossglocknerstrasse in Austria which as the name suggests is right at the base of Grossglockner Alpine Road. Unfortunately the Grossglockner Road was closed when we were there.
From Grossglockner we drove to Kranjska Gora in the Slovenian Alps which was to be our base for the next five nights. We did several short hikes on the Triglav National Park in Slovenia and drove a lot on lovely Alpine roads.
An intermediate stop on the way to Vrsic Pass on the Slovenian Alps.
We also visited Italy which was not far from Kranjska Gora.
Lago di Fusine (Italy) and me.
Lovely Pericnik Waterfall in Slovenia.
Lake Bled in Slovenia.
Lake Jasna in Kranjska Gora.
Lovely views on one of the hikes.
We also drove the Villach Alpine Road in Austria which ended here.
From Kranjska Gora we headed to Vienna from where my stepdaughter flew home and I spent three days there for work. Then a quick 1,000 kilometres drive from Vienna to Travemünde stopping overnight in Prague.
My Alpine near Travemünde at the end of the trip.
Last leg of the trip was another 30-hour ferry trip from Travemünde to Helsinki.
Lovely trip and Alpine was great on the trip. No problems what-so-ever with the car.
(This post is a duplicate post from the Alpine road trip thread on the Alpine section on this forum.)
I wrote a travel story on my Alpine pages which can be found here:
https://www.pertti.com/en/alpine/01c-my-a110-exper...
The trip started with a 30-hour ferry trip from Helsinki (Finland) to Travemünde in Germany.
My Alpine on the ferry with a 911 GT3 Touring. The owner of the GT3 was quite keen on my Alpine.
From there I drove through Germany towards Austria. In Germany I stopped in Seevetal, Bamberg and Nürnberg where I had my Alpine serviced. Then I drove to Munich airport to pick up my stepdaughter. Next step was to drive to Bruck an der Grossglocknerstrasse in Austria which as the name suggests is right at the base of Grossglockner Alpine Road. Unfortunately the Grossglockner Road was closed when we were there.
From Grossglockner we drove to Kranjska Gora in the Slovenian Alps which was to be our base for the next five nights. We did several short hikes on the Triglav National Park in Slovenia and drove a lot on lovely Alpine roads.
An intermediate stop on the way to Vrsic Pass on the Slovenian Alps.
We also visited Italy which was not far from Kranjska Gora.
Lago di Fusine (Italy) and me.
Lovely Pericnik Waterfall in Slovenia.
Lake Bled in Slovenia.
Lake Jasna in Kranjska Gora.
Lovely views on one of the hikes.
We also drove the Villach Alpine Road in Austria which ended here.
From Kranjska Gora we headed to Vienna from where my stepdaughter flew home and I spent three days there for work. Then a quick 1,000 kilometres drive from Vienna to Travemünde stopping overnight in Prague.
My Alpine near Travemünde at the end of the trip.
Last leg of the trip was another 30-hour ferry trip from Travemünde to Helsinki.
Lovely trip and Alpine was great on the trip. No problems what-so-ever with the car.
Thanks for the kind comments everyone!
First of all the cars are very expensive in here. They are taxed heavily based on CO2 and tax-free value of the car. I call this car registration tax a luxury tax although that is not commonly used term for it. When I bought my Alpine from Belgium and imported it to Finland, I had to pay a little bit more than 15 thousand euro to get the car registered in Finland. That was a relatively low amount due to the fact that the CO2 figure on the Alpine is only 153 g/km (WLTP). However, if you take the 911 GT3 Touring, which was on a ferry with me when travelling to Travemünde, as an example it's a different story. The owner of that car was a Finnish guy living in Estonia and the car had Estonian plates. Estonia doesn't have registration taxes like we do in Finland and if I look at the Estonian Porsche price list the price for the GT3 Touring is 194 thousand euro. Finnish list price for the same car is 370 thousand euro which includes 158 thousand euro registration taxes. Crazy!
I've written a little bit more detailed explanation on steps needed to get a self-imported car registered in Finland on my Alpine pages here:
https://www.pertti.com/en/alpine/01b-buying-import...
Secondly, we do have lots of speed cameras on the main roads and the speeding fines can be very hefty. If you get caught driving more than 20 km/h over speed limit then the amount of the fine becomes progressive based on your yearly salary. Sometimes millionaires get caught and there are headlines saying they got fined more than 100 thousand euro or something like that.
With regards to your question on how is driving in Finland, the answer would be that it can be enjoyable and fun.
Finland is much bigger than UK in terms of land area even though we have only 5.5 million people in here. We do have extensive road network but not a lot of users on the roads outside of Helsinki or few other bigger cities. The road conditions can be quite bad on minor roads, the Finnish winter is rough to the road surface and there are plenty of roads in here that are not in a good condition. We also have large network of gravel roads which are not optimal to a car like Alpine but there are lots of tarmac roads which are excellent for driving pleasure and many times you can have the road to yourself due to the lack of other road users.
So, not a bad place at all if you are looking for enjoyable driving moments. And luckily Alpine is such a car that you don't need to drive crazy speeds to be able to enjoy driving. That is one of the things I love about the Alpine.
I live in Lahti region which is a little bit more than 100 kilometers north from Helsinki. We don't have big mountains and alpine type of roads in Finland but there are excellent minor roads for driving nearby and just today I had an excellent drive around here. I could start hikes/walks right from my home but today I decided to take little drive on the Alpine to a starting point of a little hike. The half an hour drive there was boring but after the hike I drove to a lovely summer cafe in the middle of nowhere and I didn't take the short route. What followed was 40 kilometers of wonderful driving on small tarmac roads on the Finnish countryside. Great day!
ldn_mx5 said:
...How’s driving in Finland though? My recollection is of speed cameras everywhere and general anti-car attitude.
I wouldn't necessarily say that there is a general anti-car attitude in Finland although there are some things in here that might make somebody think that Finnish society is not very pro-car.First of all the cars are very expensive in here. They are taxed heavily based on CO2 and tax-free value of the car. I call this car registration tax a luxury tax although that is not commonly used term for it. When I bought my Alpine from Belgium and imported it to Finland, I had to pay a little bit more than 15 thousand euro to get the car registered in Finland. That was a relatively low amount due to the fact that the CO2 figure on the Alpine is only 153 g/km (WLTP). However, if you take the 911 GT3 Touring, which was on a ferry with me when travelling to Travemünde, as an example it's a different story. The owner of that car was a Finnish guy living in Estonia and the car had Estonian plates. Estonia doesn't have registration taxes like we do in Finland and if I look at the Estonian Porsche price list the price for the GT3 Touring is 194 thousand euro. Finnish list price for the same car is 370 thousand euro which includes 158 thousand euro registration taxes. Crazy!
I've written a little bit more detailed explanation on steps needed to get a self-imported car registered in Finland on my Alpine pages here:
https://www.pertti.com/en/alpine/01b-buying-import...
Secondly, we do have lots of speed cameras on the main roads and the speeding fines can be very hefty. If you get caught driving more than 20 km/h over speed limit then the amount of the fine becomes progressive based on your yearly salary. Sometimes millionaires get caught and there are headlines saying they got fined more than 100 thousand euro or something like that.
With regards to your question on how is driving in Finland, the answer would be that it can be enjoyable and fun.
Finland is much bigger than UK in terms of land area even though we have only 5.5 million people in here. We do have extensive road network but not a lot of users on the roads outside of Helsinki or few other bigger cities. The road conditions can be quite bad on minor roads, the Finnish winter is rough to the road surface and there are plenty of roads in here that are not in a good condition. We also have large network of gravel roads which are not optimal to a car like Alpine but there are lots of tarmac roads which are excellent for driving pleasure and many times you can have the road to yourself due to the lack of other road users.
So, not a bad place at all if you are looking for enjoyable driving moments. And luckily Alpine is such a car that you don't need to drive crazy speeds to be able to enjoy driving. That is one of the things I love about the Alpine.
I live in Lahti region which is a little bit more than 100 kilometers north from Helsinki. We don't have big mountains and alpine type of roads in Finland but there are excellent minor roads for driving nearby and just today I had an excellent drive around here. I could start hikes/walks right from my home but today I decided to take little drive on the Alpine to a starting point of a little hike. The half an hour drive there was boring but after the hike I drove to a lovely summer cafe in the middle of nowhere and I didn't take the short route. What followed was 40 kilometers of wonderful driving on small tarmac roads on the Finnish countryside. Great day!
Portti said:
I wouldn't necessarily say that there is a general anti-car attitude in Finland although there are some things in here that might make somebody think that Finnish society is not very pro-car.
First of all the cars are very expensive in here. They are taxed heavily based on CO2 and tax-free value of the car. I call this car registration tax a luxury tax although that is not commonly used term for it. When I bought my Alpine from Belgium and imported it to Finland, I had to pay a little bit more than 15 thousand euro to get the car registered in Finland. That was a relatively low amount due to the fact that the CO2 figure on the Alpine is only 153 g/km (WLTP). However, if you take the 911 GT3 Touring, which was on a ferry with me when travelling to Travemünde, as an example it's a different story. The owner of that car was a Finnish guy living in Estonia and the car had Estonian plates. Estonia doesn't have registration taxes like we do in Finland and if I look at the Estonian Porsche price list the price for the GT3 Touring is 194 thousand euro. Finnish list price for the same car is 370 thousand euro which includes 158 thousand euro registration taxes. Crazy!
I've written a little bit more detailed explanation on steps needed to get a self-imported car registered in Finland on my Alpine pages here:
https://www.pertti.com/en/alpine/01b-buying-import...
Secondly, we do have lots of speed cameras on the main roads and the speeding fines can be very hefty. If you get caught driving more than 20 km/h over speed limit then the amount of the fine becomes progressive based on your yearly salary. Sometimes millionaires get caught and there are headlines saying they got fined more than 100 thousand euro or something like that.
With regards to your question on how is driving in Finland, the answer would be that it can be enjoyable and fun.
Finland is much bigger than UK in terms of land area even though we have only 5.5 million people in here. We do have extensive road network but not a lot of users on the roads outside of Helsinki or few other bigger cities. The road conditions can be quite bad on minor roads, the Finnish winter is rough to the road surface and there are plenty of roads in here that are not in a good condition. We also have large network of gravel roads which are not optimal to a car like Alpine but there are lots of tarmac roads which are excellent for driving pleasure and many times you can have the road to yourself due to the lack of other road users.
So, not a bad place at all if you are looking for enjoyable driving moments. And luckily Alpine is such a car that you don't need to drive crazy speeds to be able to enjoy driving. That is one of the things I love about the Alpine.
I live in Lahti region which is a little bit more than 100 kilometers north from Helsinki. We don't have big mountains and alpine type of roads in Finland but there are excellent minor roads for driving nearby and just today I had an excellent drive around here. I could start hikes/walks right from my home but today I decided to take little drive on the Alpine to a starting point of a little hike. The half an hour drive there was boring but after the hike I drove to a lovely summer cafe in the middle of nowhere and I didn't take the short route. What followed was 40 kilometers of wonderful driving on small tarmac roads on the Finnishq countryside. Great day!
First of all the cars are very expensive in here. They are taxed heavily based on CO2 and tax-free value of the car. I call this car registration tax a luxury tax although that is not commonly used term for it. When I bought my Alpine from Belgium and imported it to Finland, I had to pay a little bit more than 15 thousand euro to get the car registered in Finland. That was a relatively low amount due to the fact that the CO2 figure on the Alpine is only 153 g/km (WLTP). However, if you take the 911 GT3 Touring, which was on a ferry with me when travelling to Travemünde, as an example it's a different story. The owner of that car was a Finnish guy living in Estonia and the car had Estonian plates. Estonia doesn't have registration taxes like we do in Finland and if I look at the Estonian Porsche price list the price for the GT3 Touring is 194 thousand euro. Finnish list price for the same car is 370 thousand euro which includes 158 thousand euro registration taxes. Crazy!
I've written a little bit more detailed explanation on steps needed to get a self-imported car registered in Finland on my Alpine pages here:
https://www.pertti.com/en/alpine/01b-buying-import...
Secondly, we do have lots of speed cameras on the main roads and the speeding fines can be very hefty. If you get caught driving more than 20 km/h over speed limit then the amount of the fine becomes progressive based on your yearly salary. Sometimes millionaires get caught and there are headlines saying they got fined more than 100 thousand euro or something like that.
With regards to your question on how is driving in Finland, the answer would be that it can be enjoyable and fun.
Finland is much bigger than UK in terms of land area even though we have only 5.5 million people in here. We do have extensive road network but not a lot of users on the roads outside of Helsinki or few other bigger cities. The road conditions can be quite bad on minor roads, the Finnish winter is rough to the road surface and there are plenty of roads in here that are not in a good condition. We also have large network of gravel roads which are not optimal to a car like Alpine but there are lots of tarmac roads which are excellent for driving pleasure and many times you can have the road to yourself due to the lack of other road users.
So, not a bad place at all if you are looking for enjoyable driving moments. And luckily Alpine is such a car that you don't need to drive crazy speeds to be able to enjoy driving. That is one of the things I love about the Alpine.
I live in Lahti region which is a little bit more than 100 kilometers north from Helsinki. We don't have big mountains and alpine type of roads in Finland but there are excellent minor roads for driving nearby and just today I had an excellent drive around here. I could start hikes/walks right from my home but today I decided to take little drive on the Alpine to a starting point of a little hike. The half an hour drive there was boring but after the hike I drove to a lovely summer cafe in the middle of nowhere and I didn't take the short route. What followed was 40 kilometers of wonderful driving on small tarmac roads on the Finnishq countryside. Great day!
Now there are some nice photos of my Alpine. I was approached by a young photographer called Perttu Rantakaulio who wanted to take some pictures of my A110. Few of Perttu's pictures of my Alpine can be found below. These pictures were taken close to where I live. More car photo's by Perttu can be found on his Instagram account #finnishexotics.
This driving season with the Alpine is now over. I put the car into winter storage last weekend. The car has now 19,000 km on the clock which means that I drove approx. 9,000 km this driving season. The biggest highlight of the season was the long European road trip mentioned above but there has also been many other enjoyable moments with the car on the twisty Finnish roads.
The car is my daily driver in the summer and I feel that it is perfectly suitable for day-to-day tasks. It has also been very problem free driving so far.
Lengthier story related to my experiences with my A110 can be found on my website:
https://pertti.com/en/alpine/01c-my-a110-experienc...
There isn't much storage space inside the car. No glovebox, no cup holders and no door pockets. I usually keep my phone on the centre console storage shelf on the opening below the gear selector etc. I also bought a small storage box which is now fitted behind the passenger seat.
Alpine was parked between Donkervoort and Ferrari 296 GTB on the Sportscar Breakfast Club meeting in July 2023.
The car is my daily driver in the summer and I feel that it is perfectly suitable for day-to-day tasks. It has also been very problem free driving so far.
Lengthier story related to my experiences with my A110 can be found on my website:
https://pertti.com/en/alpine/01c-my-a110-experienc...
There isn't much storage space inside the car. No glovebox, no cup holders and no door pockets. I usually keep my phone on the centre console storage shelf on the opening below the gear selector etc. I also bought a small storage box which is now fitted behind the passenger seat.
Alpine was parked between Donkervoort and Ferrari 296 GTB on the Sportscar Breakfast Club meeting in July 2023.
My A110 is finally back on the road after being about six months in winter storage. I picked up the car from the storage on my hometown last weekend. My plan was to pick up the car a week earlier but heavy snowfall on most of Finland meant that I had to postpone that trip.
It did still require some snowplowing to get the the car out from the garage on Saturday:
Once the snow was cleared it was time to hit the road again:
Next it is time to do another Central European road trip to get the car serviced.
More info on my A110 experiences here:
https://pertti.com/en/alpine/01c-my-a110-experienc...
It did still require some snowplowing to get the the car out from the garage on Saturday:
Once the snow was cleared it was time to hit the road again:
Next it is time to do another Central European road trip to get the car serviced.
More info on my A110 experiences here:
https://pertti.com/en/alpine/01c-my-a110-experienc...
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