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Official: Renault & Caterham to build Alpine sports cars

Renault has confirmed it is to partner with Caterham to build a range of Alpine sports cars in Dieppe from 2015. The partnership between Renault and Caterham is a logical extension of their F1 partnership but now, with the joint venture to produce their own sports cars, goes much deeper than the almost badge-engineering Williams Renaults. A new company - Société des Automobiles Alpine Caterham – will be jointly owned by Caterham and Renault and will develop models in small and large volumes to be marketed as both Renault Alpine and Caterham, and will be built in Renault’s Dieppe factory that currently churns out Renaultsport models for the road and track, and is the historical home of Alpine.

Driven: Range Rover Evoque

As Sam Livingstone opines in his review of the latest Porsche 911, we are in a period of car design consolidation, with the new 911 the ultimate expression of a slightly suffocating trend. Yet every so often, a vehicle appears that breaks these rules and – through a combination of factors that can be difficult to quantify – captures the imagination, becoming a symbol of the times and an overnight market success. Such vehicles tend to emerge once a decade or so, yet the late 90s and early noughties were extraordinary for giving birth to three – the Ford Ka of '96, Audi TT of '98 and Mini of '01.

MINI Beachcomber Concept revealed

The Countryman-based MINI Beachcomber Concept Another month in 2009 and yet another MINI. When we reported last month on the MINI Rolls Royce Edition we reckoned that BMW had managed to produce a dozen new models of the MINI in 2009, although the number of new models and limited editions is so large we thought we might have missed one or two. But if we were right with the dozen models at that point you can now make that a baker’s dozen with the reveal of MINI’s latest creation – The MINI Beachcomber.