A police Alpine restored in the garage of the co-host of Wheeler Dealers

It has been four months since a team of four to five people worked at the Méca Rétro Sport 76 garage in Saint-Hellier. (Seine-Maritime) is working to restore a unique vehicle: a Alpine A110 Gendarmerie 1600 S from 1971.

Only 14 vehicles of this type

This vehicle which was on the A1 motorway in the Roye sector “is one of 14 vehicles of this type”, explains Jean-Yves Hardouin, responsible for the mechanical memory of the Melun National Gendarmerie Museum.

And only four vehicles had this configuration.

This car, “it was the missing link of the rapid intervention vehicles that we have at the gendarmerie museum”, indicates Jean-Yves Hardouin.

More than 30 years in a garage

Purchased at auction in 1979 by an individual, the Alpine will first change color, going from blue to white as well as losing what distinguished it from the others, its gendarmerie attributes.

Until the early 1990s, its owner drove it, then left it in a garage for more than 30 years.

Until a year ago “when a friend, a former police officer, managed to convince him to sell it,” says the person in charge of mechanical memory at the Gendarmerie museum, who negotiated the price and passed the file on to of the endowment fund.

Restored in the heart of Varenne

It’s in the garage of one of the best-known mechanics on the small screen thanks to the show Wheeler DealersAurélien Letheux that the Alpine A110 Gendarmerie is currently being restored.

“This is a total restoration. It’s almost even a reconstruction,” confides Aurélien Letheux.

Each part is removed, renovated and reassembled so that the vehicle looks like it did back in the day.

In all, it will take a year and a half of work for the team of the famous Brayon mechanic to restore the Berlinettewith the objective: “to present it at the next Rétromobile show in 2025”, he says.

And of course, before joining the National Gendarmerie museum in Melun.

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