The National Gendarmerie inaugurated the first series of Alpines A110 in May. According to the French government, the fast sports cars of Renault’s subsidiary Alpine are mainly used on the highways to intercept drug dealers and traffic offenders.
The fast Alpines are powered by a turbocharged 1.8-litre four-cylinder engine, which produces 252 hp and has a pulling power of 320 Newton meters. The car sprints from 0 to 100 kilometers per hour in 4.5 seconds and the top speed is 250 kilometers per hour.
Apparently all that violence was just a bit too much for the officer who slid off the road on the French A4 near Fresnes-en-Woëvre. The car ended up on its roof next to the road, in the middle of the tall grass. It is not clear how the accident happened, but given the skid marks, it appears that the officer lost control of the vehicle. No one was injured in the accident, according to news site ‘Allo17’.
Photos of the crashed police car, with a police officer next to it, were soon shared on social media. Bernard Ollivier, the former head of Alpine, also responded to the incident on Twitter. “The Alpine is easy to drive, but from a certain speed the gendarmes really have to get driving training,” he writes.
The model used by the French police is the A110 Pure, the base model in Alpine’s sports car range. Apart from the police decals and the flashing light, the interior of the car has also been slightly modified. For example, an extra screen has been added on the passenger side and we see a device that can operate the light signals and sirens.
In the 1960s, the French police force used the original A110, which was much smaller. Until a few decades ago, the police in the Netherlands also drove sports cars on the highway. In most cases, this concerned a Porsche 911 Targa.