Dorifutography

Ever wanted a Lotus Elise, but didn’t want to be mainstream? Ever wanted to stand out from the crowd of common track toys? Well, here’s something that might fit that category! After the success of Renault making the ‘5’ into its wide-bodied counterpart, they wanted to try it again. The Sport Spider was the first car to be developed under the then newly emerged ‘Renault Sport’ brand as a way to bring more track focused cars into commonplace.  The car itself featured radical shapes from its concept, the Renault Laguna, designed by the genius ‘Patrick Le Quement’, who also designed the Ford Sierra, Renault Twingo I, Avantime, Megane I & II, just to name a few. His motto was ‘Design = Quality’, and you can truly see that in the Sport Spider! The car was truly unique, and followed its track-focused approach quite closely. With smooth lines of plastic composite embracing the exterior and no door handles, the car was as aerodynamic as a teardrop. And when it came to detailing the inte...

Another month brings another weird addition to my articles, with this issue reviewing the Renault-Alpine GTA V6. I’ve been meaning to review this car since last year, but that’s when we got into our first New Zealand Level 4 lockdown, and I was forced to wait patiently. And though I did do other cars before I got to this one, I feel like the ones before can be treated as a good introduction to how my taste in cars are. Weird shapes, quirky features and obscurity is my forte, so let’s get on with it! Mostly everyone knows what the Alpine brand is about, with the emergence of the new A110 back in 2017, but not many know that the brand actually started as just a racing team formed by Jean Rédélé meant to tune up old Renault 4CV’s. Originally called ‘ Société des Automobiles Alpine SAS’. The name ‘Alpine’ actually referenced his wins in the ‘Coupe des Alpes’, but was a bit of a problem, as he did not realize that a year before in 1953, Sunbeam released a car called the Sunbeam Alpine… A ye...