Renault buys Caterham out of the joint Alpine sports car venture

Renault has announced that they are buying Caterham’s 50% stake in the Société des Automobiles Alpine Caterham joint venture to create a new Alpine sports car.

It’s more than eighteen months since Renault and Caterham joined forces to create a new breed of sports cars around the Alpine brand.

Renault say the arrangement is a mutual one and officially brings to an end the joint venture, and that the business will be renamed Société des Automobiles Alpine this month, although Renault aren’t excluding further ventures with Caterham in the future.

The split means that the Alpine project will now be a purely Renault one, and Renault are planning to get their Alpine to market by 2016.

It appears that the split is down to the Renault delays in getting the Alpine design finished, with the agreement requiring both the Alpine and Caterham cars to be launched at the same time and Caterham already with a car ready to put on show.

It’s also rumoured that Caterham has gobbled up German niche sports car maker Artega, presumably in an effort to find a chassis it can use for its car (which will now presumably be delayed, although probably by not as much as Renault’s).

We’ll find out how much truth there is in that in due course.