The Mégane R26.R shows Renault's skill at building cheap but brilliant performance cars that really get the super unleaded flowing round every petrolhead's veins.

The thing is, despite Renaultsport's best efforts, Renault has no sports car in its line-up, making that expensive F1 team increasingly irrelevant.

We chatted to the director of Renaultsport at the motor show and he assured us that this will be fixed by the return of Alpine sometime in 2010.

The company will operate as a sister outfit to Renaultsport - which itself is based in the old Alpine factory in Dieppe.

Alpine by Renault will be created as a stand-alone project, much like Abarth.

However, while Abarth will eventually build its own car, Renaultsport will continue to breathe heavily on standard Renault products, leaving Alpine to focus on building its own cars from the outset.

We asked if this was going to be GT-R based, but Renault man strongly hinted it would use Infiniti G37 Coupe/Nissan 370Z underpinnings.

Makes sense given the flexibility of the Nissan FM platform: the Infiniti is the comfort version and is already available. The 370Z is more driver-focussed and is likely to make its bow at the LA Auto Show in November. So a track-biased Alpine, with high performance and high efficiency thanks to hefty weight reductions could work.

Shame we have to wait at least two years to get it, but it sounds like the Alpine A370 could be the most exciting of the 60 new models Renault/Nissan has pledged to introduce before 2012.

via tribes.cartribe