If Luca de Meo has planned to detail his battle plan for the Group Renault in January 2021, internally, the major maneuvers have already started. Officially in office since early July, the new CEO of Losange has not lost a second. Moreover, at the end of July, Luca de Meo did not hesitate to declare: “Over the past four weeks, I think we’ve made more decisions on the product than in the past two years.”
And you don’t have to wait until January to discover the first fruits of her labor. In a statement, Renault unveiled the basis of its reorganization. It will be built around four “business units”: Renault, Dacia, Alpine and Nouvelles mobilités. For Luca de Meo, it is “to work in a simpler way, more oriented to markets and customers, with a team spirit, to achieve the best possible result.”
For the moment, it is officially question of a project and a phase of reflection is launched. Four people were chosen to lead this reflection. Luca de Meo will take care of Renault, Denis le Vot of Dacia, Cyril Abiteboul of Alpine and Clotilde Delbos of new mobility.
The chef’s surprise is clearly Cyril Abiteboul. The man is currently the Managing Director of Renault Sport Racing and therefore takes care of the Formula 1 team. A presence all the more surprising given that Alpine has recently been managed by Patrick Marinoff, who was debauched at Mercedes-AMG ! Is he already being pushed towards the exit? Will it have another function? We don’t know yet.
The good point is that Alpine has a future. While its future already seemed uncertain, with an A110 struggling to win over new customers after its successful debut, Luca de Meo continued the adventure. And Alpine should even gain ground… to the point of chasing another label.
According to our information, the Renault Sport brand is indeed on the verge of being abandoned. Luca de Meo would have taken this decision to give more space to Alpine, which would thus be the only sports brand of the group. The appointment of the director of Renault Sport Racing to pilot Alpine seems to confirm this.
The general idea is a name change, not the killing of an entire entity. But should we expect a simple blue and orange shifting of Renault Sport’s activities? Or will Luca de Meo do a more thorough cleaning in the activities of Renault Sport and merge the duplicate services currently between Renault Sport and Alpine? Man is in search of savings. This may give rise to fears of the elimination of positions in the Renault Sport division, which manages the development of production sports vehicles but also vehicles for customer competitions, such as the Clio Cup, Rally and RX. The project should be clarified in the coming weeks.
What about the range? The end of Renault Sport would only affect the Mégane, the only model still badged RS, the Clio RS having been abandoned. But that would not automatically mean the end of sports cars at Renault… if there are still any because the antipollution standards seem to have nipped the projects in the bud. There too, it could be question of Alpine. A homecoming since we remember a certain R5 Alpine Turbo.
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