"Alpine" Wikipedia entry in bogus "Espace" claim!!

[macaroni]

Just looking at the Alpine (cars) entry on Wikipedia and I see that it claims the Espace was built by them!

"Fortunately, the Alpine factory in Dieppe continues to expand: in the 1980s they built the special R5 Turbo cars, following the rear engined formula they have always used. They built all Clio Williams', Espaces, and RenaultSport Spider"

I assume this is absolute rubbish and at no point were any Espaces produced in Dieppe?

[Anders Dinsen]

It's rubbish that they built "all" Espace's, but they did in fact assemble some. Capacity at Romoratin was very limited, so Dieppe was used as a second assembly line. I don't know, but think it's about 10% of all Espace's that were built at Dieppe - that's final assembly. All body parts, chassis etc was still prepared at Romoratin, but then some was shipped to Dieppe for the assembly. I think the VIN shows where a particular Espace comes from.

- Anders

[roy4matra]

Just looking at the Alpine (cars) entry on Wikipedia and I see that it claims the Espace was built by them!

"Fortunately, the Alpine factory in Dieppe continues to expand: in the 1980s they built the special R5 Turbo cars, following the rear engined formula they have always used. They built all Clio Williams', Espaces, and RenaultSport Spider"

I assume this is absolute rubbish and at no point were any Espaces produced in Dieppe?

Sorry to disappoint you Antony, but many Espace were built at the Alpine factory at Dieppe.  Renault kept asking for more as demand increased and Matra were reaching max. capacity at the new factory they had built especially for the Espace back in 1992 when the Espace was expected to only last until about 1997.

So they started assembling extra Espace at Dieppe which had lots of spare capacity.  All Romorantin production have a fabrication number starting with 'T' whilst Dieppe builds start with a 'K'.

[macaroni]

Wow, that is news to me.
Is either version particularly sought after in terms of build quality etc?

P.S. I've just noticed I wrote "Wilipedia" in my subject. This was purely due to the size of my fingers and the proximity of the K to the L key, rather than any purile indictment of Wikipedia.

(note from Lennart: I have fixed your typo - but not before I had a good laugh, nice one! :-) )

[Will Falconer]

Wow, that is news to me.
Is either version particularly sought after in terms of build quality etc?

The Dieppe Espaces oversteer rather badly, but then putting the engine where seats 6 & 7 should be wasn't a good idea.   Sorry

[Lennart Sorth]

putting the engine where seats 6 & 7 should be wasn't a good idea.   

lol - sweet.

I can confirm that my Dieppe built Espace has no seats 6 & 7, but there is no engine there either

/Lennart