Alpine’s one-off Beware of the Crocodile – Alpine Lacoste A290 Rallye has finished second in the Concept Car category at the Chantilly Arts & Elegance Richard Mille Concours d’Elegance. The show car is based on the track-focused, all-electric A290 Rallye and was created with French fashion house Lacoste. Its calling card is a design game: 290 hidden crocodiles inside and outside the car.

A collaboration between two French brands that rarely share a stage has just been rewarded at one of the world’s best-known concours events. The one-off Beware of the Crocodile – Alpine Lacoste A290 Rallye was shown on the Le Nôtre lawns at the Château de Chantilly, where the jury of the Chantilly Arts & Elegance Richard Mille placed it second in the Concept Car category. According to Alpine, the jury highlighted the originality of the design and the creative dialogue between the two houses.

A race car reworked as a design statement

The starting point is the Alpine A290 Rallye, the brand’s electric customer racing car and, in Alpine’s own words, the most radical and performance-focused version of the A290 range so far. For Chantilly, the car was stripped down and completely re-bodied from the ground up. A custom body kit gives it a sharper, more aggressive stance, while a number of parts carried over from the production model were treated with specific colours, materials and finishes to match the new look.

The same approach continues inside. Alpine says surfaces were finished directly in paint to save weight, in line with the lightness the brand has always emphasised, and the front and rear bumpers are left in exposed carbon fibre — the result of work between Alpine’s design and motorsport teams.

290 crocodiles, hidden on purpose

The Lacoste input goes well beyond a badge on the flank. The design takes its cue from the red tongue of the Lacoste crocodile, and the emblem that has appeared on the brand’s polo shirts since 1933 is scattered across the car as a series of Easter eggs. The ‘bento box’ on the bonnet is styled as a pool in which three crocodiles race each other, one for each of the three designers behind the project. The headlights are treated as the crocodile’s gaze, and the usual shark-fin antenna is replaced by crocodile scutes. In total, Alpine says 290 crocodiles are hidden in the door panels, seats, boot, rear of the cabin and on the exterior.

“Few places are as synonymous with elegance as Chantilly, so parade the Beware of the Crocodile – Alpine Lacoste A290 Rallye here seemed totally natural for a car built at the crossroads of style and performance. This one-off model is a meeting of two French icons – Alpine’s motorsport spirit and Lacoste’s sporting elegance – brought together not as a badge exercise, but as something we crafted together, stitch by stitch, crocodile by crocodile. Every hidden detail in this car is proof that performance and personality can share the same skin.”

The words are those of Antony Villain, Vice President of Design at Alpine Cars.

What it means

Fashion tie-ups are a well-worn tool in the car industry, but they usually stop at trim packages and colour swatches. Alpine has instead put the collaboration on a competition-derived electric platform, which keeps the exercise closer to the motorsport side of the brand than to a styling pack. It also keeps the A290 name visible while Alpine builds out its electric line-up, following the A290 hot hatch launched in 2024 and the A390 fastback that arrived in 2025.

Facts: Alpine Lacoste A290 Rallye

  • One-off show car, not a production model
  • Based on the Alpine A290 Rallye electric customer racing car
  • Completely re-bodied with a custom body kit
  • Exposed carbon-fibre front and rear bumpers
  • Interior surfaces finished directly in paint to reduce weight
  • 290 crocodile references hidden inside and outside
  • Second place, Concept Car category, Chantilly Arts & Elegance Richard Mille

At Chantilly the one-off was joined by a selection of Alpine heritage models covering more than 70 years of the brand, along with cars from Alpine’s customer and club community. Alpine has not announced any plans to build the car.

Source: media.alpinecars.com