The Alpine A108 was a light-weight glass-fibre bodied, rear-engined two-door coupé produced for a young competition-oriented Dieppe based Renault dealer called Jean Rédélé. The car replaced the Alpine A106 and was based on mechanical components from the Renault Dauphine. The Alpine 106 had taken its name from the first three digits of the four-digit homologation number of the old Renault 4CV on which the car was based. Applying the same logic, the new car should have been called 109 because it used mechanical components from the newer Renault Dauphine which was registered under the French homologation number 1090, but instead the new car, which inherited many of its non-mechanical components from the 106, was given the name Alpine 108. In this form, where the 106 had used an engine from the Renault 4CV, the new model, as launched in 1957, used the Gordini version of the 845 cc engine fitted in the Dauphine. (Source: Wikipedia.org, CC BY-SA)