Alain Serpaggi

Réédition partielle de la collection Alpine Renault - Construisez l’Alpine A110 1600S Berlinette

THE ONE-MAN BAND

One of the key players in the Alpine family was Alain Serpaggi. As a driver, salesman and tuner, he was involved with the Dieppe-based firm from 1968 to 1995.

Born in Madagascar in 1938, Alain Serpaggi was a true Norman who began his career as a car salesman at the age of 24. The brand he represents? Renault. His hobby? Car rallies, so much so that he quickly became a renowned driver in his region. The meeting was inevitable: it was in 1968 that Jacques Cheinisse, who by then had exchanged his racing driver's cap for that of manager at Alpine, made him an honest offer...

There are drivers who are multi-talented, Belgian Jacky Ickx being the most famous of them all, having won everything from motorbike racing to rallies, rally-raids, endurance racing and Formula 1. And Alain Serpaggi, at the most humble level, is no different, very much at home on the racetrack in both speed and endurance, as well as in rallies. And yet, as the man from Normandy was never reluctant to admit, competition was not his favourite pastime... He disliked the stress that inevitably is associated with it. Although at the level of the best, he preferred a good practice or set-up session to be able to set some 'hot' times on a circuit without having to endure the stress.

Clearly, not all men are cut from the same cloth! And by 1968, Alpine was well past its start-up phase. The company's sporting success in rallies and on circuits, its dynamism and its links with Renault meant that sales were exploding. However, the sales network still needed to be strengthened, and that was why Jacques Cheinisse was interested in the profile of Alain Serpaggi. Alpine needed good salesmen who were familiar with the world of sport, who had that instinct, and Serpaggi was clearly one of them. In 1968, he became one of the brand's very first salesmen, and was based at Alpine's new head office in Épinay-sur-Seine, near Paris.

Serpaggi continued to take part in sporting events. That same year, Jacques Cheinisse offered him the chance to compete in the 24 Hours of Le Mans in an official car - an offer a driver just couldn't refuse! Serpaggi was ecstatic: it was like a dream come true.

Especially as his team-mate happened to be his friend Le Guellec. The 1500-engined Alpine A210 finished 9th overall and first in its class of 1100-1600 prototypes: this saved the honour of Alpine, whose four V8-powered spearheads had pitifully retired. The experience was unforgettable. The following year, Serpaggi performed just as well driving an A210, this time equipped with a small 1000 engine: he finished 12th overall, 1st in the Sport-protos 1000- 1100 category and 1st in the performance index.

A period racing single-seaters

From then on, Serpaggi divided his time at Alpine between sales and driving, and Jacques Cheinisse then asked him to drive the Formula France single-seaters... with one idea in mind: to turn the driver into a Trojan horse for his peers, since he was in charge of finding customers for the Formula France Alpines during the weekends when the races took place. He ended up selling five of them, which wasn't too bad considering that the maximum number of cars on a circuit is around thirty! Endurance, circuits... And what about rallies?

They were, after all, the original discipline of the driver. At the turn of the 1970s, the Berlinette had become the car to beat, and the factory's sports programme was very important. This programme, and the results it achieved, were the reason for the company's reputation and good commercial results. Although Serpaggi was not part of the official drivers' team, he was often employed as a freelance driver, both to race and to provide support to the official drivers. Nevertheless, it was in Formula 3 that he was most often seen, with places of honour in Europe in the first half of the 1970s.

Renault's new 2-litre V6 competition engine, the brand's first step towards Formula 1, was launched in 1972 and presented to the press the following year. Alpine soon produced the A440, followed by the A441 for the new European Sport Prototype Championship. Alain Serpaggi started driving the A440 in 1973, alongside the car's historic driver, Jean-Pierre Jabouille. For 1974, three cars were entered in the series, Jabouille, Serpaggi and Cudini. The Renault cars dominated the competition and Serpaggi, thanks to his exemplary consistency, became European Champion at the end of the season. At the same time, Alain Serpaggi still had time to take part in Formula 2 events, with considerably less success it has to be said, as well as the 24 Hours of Le Mans, where he finished 8th.

Focusing

The second part of the 1970s marked a change of direction for the driver who became European Champion at the age of 36. He concentrated on fine-tuning his cars, which led him to join the Berex (Bureau d'Études et Recherches Expérimentales) in Dieppe, which was Renault's and Alpine's sports laboratory, responsible for creating some legendary models. From 1975 until he retired 20 years later, Alain Serpaggi worked on the creation of both competition and street models, including the Alpine A310 V6, the entire R5 Alpine series and the monstrous R5 Turbo.

In fact, it was driving one of them that, after returning to the driving seat, he became French Rally Champion in the second division at the ripe old age of 45! But it was not until 1989 that he finally decided to retire from the sport. For his 'civil' retirement, Serpaggi waited another six years, until 1995. He was only 57: a little young, admittedly, for a man who was still going strong, but times were changing and Berex was closing. It was time to give up. He then turned to a number of vintage car competitions and other demonstrations, generally driving an Alpine. All in all, a countless number of races and an enviable list of achievements for a driver who remained loyal to Alpine and Renault.

For more information...

Alpine and the rear engine

Alpine cars have always had a rear engine, and this has had certain consequences: an assertive character, a strong identity and a steady accumulation of precise know-how. A heritage from the Renault 4 CV! Had the Renault 4CV been a more traditional car, with a front engine and rear-wheel drive, the Alpine would have adopted this configuration... or it might never have been created. The first Alpine had a rear engine simply because it was still a 4CV, albeit a brilliantly improved one, but a 4CV nonetheless. In this respect, it's amusing that a similar approach was taken with the Alpine's ‘best enemy’, the Porsche, whose first version, the 356, was born as a result of the transformation of another popular rear-engined car: the Volkswagen Beetle.

The 1600 SX, like all Alpine cars, is rear-engined, which allows it to have a sloping front bonnet. Crédits photo © Renault D.R. / Archives et Collections

Imbalance and driving ability

The technical advantage of rear-wheel drive is its simplicity, but in order to maintain space and compactness, the engine had to be set back from the wheel axle, with a considerable overhang. Only the gearbox was positioned in front of this axle. This significant weight moved the car's logical centre of gravity, usually located between the four wheels. The resulting imbalance could impair road handling. However, this imbalance is negligible for a low-powered car such as the 4CV. The same cannot be said of the Alpine, which has been able to achieve several hundreds of horsepower with the turbocharged V6 of recent generations.

The Alpines had been designed for competition, which meant that the drivers were able to turn this to their advantage: since the weight at the rear was unbalancing the handling, why not take advantage of this by stalling the rear end and sending the car into long drifts in the bends? This increased the speed of the car through the bends... provided you were a virtuoso driver. Another advantage of having the engine at the rear of the wheel axle is that it no longer needs to be above the axle and can therefore be positioned lower down, at ground level. All to the benefit of aerodynamics! In fact, you only have to look at a Berlinette to appreciate the fluidity of its lines, not just at the front but above all at the rear. The plunging bonnet is also an excellent aerodynamic feature, which is the eternal advantage of Alpines with their excellent air penetration coefficient.

View of the engine of the A110 driven by Jean-Luc Thérier in the 1975 East African Safari. The sticker indicates ‘left-hand drive’ . © IXO Collections SAS - Tous droits réservés. Crédits photo © Renault D.R. / Archives et Collections

Rear-engine or mid-engine?

While the 1960s and 1970s saw the gradual phase-out of rear-wheel drive, Alpine remained inextricably linked to rear-wheel drive. Even better, as it continued to source its powertrains from Renault, the Dieppe-based brand often had to adapt parts originally designed for front-wheel drive to rear-wheel drive: the last straw! So, is it loyalty to a concept that made it famous? Or nostalgia? Perhaps a bit of both... one wonders why Alpine didn't convert to a different configuration long before this.

After all, as soon as it switched from the 4CV platform to a beam chassis, Alpine was in a position to break free of the all-rear construction straitjacket. The company from Dieppe could even have created a mid-engined Alpine, which would seem to be the ideal configuration for a sports car. However, Alpine never opted for this configuration. Perhaps the excellent results achieved by the A108s encouraged the brand to pursue the rear-engine option. It wasn't necessarily a bad choice, since it was the rear engine's imbalance that allowed it to make these very advantageous drifts in curves. Finally, there was a French mid-engined sports car, the Matra Djet, but it proved less effective in tight turns on small rally roads than its rivals, the Alpines.

The latest Alpines

In the early 1970s, when the future A310 was being developed, the question of the mid-engine was raised again. After various tests, the results were inconclusive. This position ruled out any possibility of passengers in the back. The new Alpine had to be more ‘bourgeois’ than the A110, and it would have been unthinkable for it not to accommodate four passengers, not to be a 2+2. For this reason, the A310 was designed as an ‘all-rear’ car with a cantilevered engine. The problem arose again in 1976 with the adoption of the heavier V6 engine: could we continue with this architecture? Well, yes! Admittedly, the A310 V6 wasn't the easiest Alpine to drive, but with this car the Alpine was moving away from being a competition car. In the end, its drivers didn't push it as far as its predecessors.

The same applied to the GTA in the 1980s. In 1991, the new A610 resembled its predecessor, but had evolved considerably... while retaining its rear engine. It was an excellent GT... but not a competition car! The most successful Alpine ever was the A110 Berlinetta. Its rear engine was an advantage thanks to its ‘just right’ geometry and low weight. Its successors were heavier: a handicap in competition, especially for an Alpine car whose original lightness allowed it a certain amount of imagination, which the greatest drivers were able to exploit to their advantage.

The "other" Serpaggi

One Serpaggi can hide another! That's the case for another talented driver, Corsican Francis Serpaggi, no relation to Alain, who also spent most of his career at the wheel of an Alpine. Very attached to his island, Francis became a specialist in Corsican rallies, with the Tour de Corse and Tour Île de Beauté topping the list. However, Francis Serpaggi also enjoyed competing in rallies in the south of France, such as the Rallye du Var and the Ronde Cévenole, where he shone particularly brightly.

After an R8 Gordini, the driver bought a Berlinette 1300; from then on, he drove almost exclusively in A110s until 1977. After his 1300 came a 1600S, then an 1800, and he was sometimes entrusted with the steering wheel of an official Berlinette, as in the 1969 Tour of Corsica where, from the very first special stage, he set the fastest time, right under the noses of the official drivers!

After Alpine officially withdrew from the rally scene, Francis Serpaggi turned to the car that succeeded the A110 in the hearts of rally drivers, the Lancia Stratos, then the 037. He ended his racing career in 1983.