Petrolicious, the creator of high quality, unique movies and articles for traditional automotive fanatics, has launched its newest video, that includes automotive devotee Jürgen Claus who tracked down the automotive of his goals, an unique Alpine A110 rally automotive.
After a few years away, the Petrolicious web site and YouTube Channel has been lately rebooted by duPont REGISTRY Group, and new movies are actually dropping each Friday. Petrolicious celebrates the innovations, the personalities, and the aesthetics that ignite a collective lust for nice automotive machines, and it seeks to tell, entertain, and encourage its group of aficionados and pique the curiosity of those that have been lacking out.
In the present day, Petrolicious takes up Claus’s story…
In Stuttgart, two manufacturers are king: Porsche and Mercedes. Their presence is ubiquitous, paved into the roads, the tradition, and the very id of the area. In the event you grew up there, you have been supposed to select a facet and pledge allegiance to one of many two.
Jürgen Claus grew up in Stuttgart however didn’t adhere to that standard German knowledge. One thing else had earned his consideration. In flashes, glimpses, and some stolen frames of life throughout rides on his bike, he would spot a automotive. It might streak previous, barely there, after which gone, however every time, it gave Jürgen one thing to dream about.
Earlier than it was a legend, earlier than it was the automotive that toppled giants, the A110 was a newly fleshed curiosity. The Alpine was born in Dieppe, France, within the early Nineteen Sixties as Jean Rédélé’s imaginative and prescient of a “weight is king” sports activities automotive constructed for agility over brute pressure. He noticed weight as the true enemy, believing that the best stability of energy, dimension, dealing with, and ease would create one thing really particular.
What the world ended up with was a fiberglass-bodied, rear-engined scalpel of a automotive, constructed on Renault underpinnings. It was compact, delicate trying, and deceptively fast. The A110 would ultimately thrive the place muscle automobiles faltered, changing into a Rally software that affixed its identify onto motorsport historical past. It received in all places, on the Monte Carlo levels, within the Alps, on gravel, on tarmac. It was gentle, agile, and totally unforgiving. In 1973, when the World Rally Championship was formally based, it was the Alpine A110 that took the very first title, proving that extra horsepower wasn’t all the time higher. Different light-weight pioneers just like the Lancia Stratos could by no means have been penned if it wasn’t for the A110.
Jürgen’s seek for his A110 took him deep into the unknown, pulling threads on rumors and whispers. Discovering a daily Alpine in first rate situation isn’t straightforward. Discovering a works race automotive? Virtually unattainable. The world is filled with lookalikes, tributes, and fiberglass imposters. True competitors constructed A110s are ghosts. He ultimately caught wind of a automotive that had supposedly been offered in Hungary, an actual Alpine with actual pedigree. There have been no paperwork, no clear paper path, only a lead. He did what anybody with an obsession this deep would do. He packed a backpack full of money and hit the highway. No ensures, no guarantees.
Beneath layers of questionable modifications, spoilers, turbochargers, intercoolers, there was one thing unmistakable. The plaques within the entrance trunk have been nonetheless unique. On them, the chassis quantity revealed the reality. The automotive was actual. It didn’t matter that it appeared nothing prefer it ought to. It didn’t matter that it might take years of labor to deliver it again. He wasn’t leaving with out it.
Jürgen spent years undoing the injury. Hours became weeks and weeks became months. Sanding, welding, reshaping… dreaming. Obsessing. There have been no blueprints, no manufacturing facility information with detailed specs. The A110 wasn’t constructed with the obsessive precision of a Stuttgart engineer. It was constructed by French fingers, refined by trial and error. Each reinforcement, each brace, each tweak was added as wanted. Issues have been solved on the spot, one after the other with little documentation to comply with. There have been solely 17 real variations of this automotive ever constructed, and that’s in 1973. What number of nonetheless existed? Only a handful of originals bobbing in a sea of replicas. Ready to be found, and restored.
“My identify is Jürgen Claus,” he says, “and I fell in love with a queen. The queen of rallies.”
