1:24 Alpine A110 Seats

The berlinetta from Dieppe

The Alpine A110 was built in Dieppe in Normandy, out of the workshop of Jean Redele, and it was put together quite differently from the competition: a fiberglass body sat on a backbone frame of steel tube and the engine went behind the rear axle. The car weighed only a little over seven hundred kilograms, and on narrow gravel and in mountain passes that gave it an advantage more powerful machines could not make up.

The high point came in 1973, when Alpine took the first manufacturers' title in the newly founded World Rally Championship. Before that it had wins at Monte Carlo behind it and a string of triumphs on stages all over Europe.

Seats make the cabin

In so cramped a space the seats take up the most room and the eye settles on them before anything else. A molded part tends to be thick and its side bolsters look soft; separately produced buckets have crisp edges and proportions closer to the original, so it pays to replace them even where the rest of the interior stays as it came from the box.

Before you start

Try the seating dry, because the floor on models of this subject varies in height and a difference of half a millimeter shows. The upholstery of competition examples tended to be in black or dark blue fabric, while lighter leatherette also appeared on the road versions, so choose the shade according to the form of the car you are building. Slightly roughening the surface before painting helps as well, because a smoothly finished seat looks in a photograph more like a plastic toy than an upholstered piece of furniture.