Renault has itself something of a conundrum.  The French automaker’s got an F1 team, a hugely successful one in recent years, but there’s no dedicated roadgoing sports car to go with it.  Sure, the Megane R26.R is off its head, and the Clio Sport’s nothing to shirk at either.  But for true ground-up purpose-built sports car performance, the diamond has little to offer.

While the technology developed in F1 doubtlessly contributes to better road cars, it’s a lot of coin to be spending and most participating manufacturers are at least able to offset that by talking up their roadgoing sports cars that make the most of their race-gained innovation.

Of late though, there’s been news that Renault is looking to breathe new life into the revered Alpine badge—possibly using the same FM platform that Nissan’s 370Z will roll on.

In the 1960s, through to the early 90s, Alpine built racing and road cars powered by rear-mounted Renault, until the big R finally abandoned the brand due to trademark issues with the Alpine name.  The Alpine factory still exists though, and is responsible for the manufacture of some of the RenaultSport models.

While it’s been rumoured that Renault’s 2010 sports car would be based on the mental Nissan GT-R, RenaultSport has hinted that it would more likely be built on the FM platform used by the Infiniti G37, and Nissan’s upcoming 370Z.

Considering Renault and Nissan have declared a combined assault of 60 new models in the next four years, we’re sure that between them, they could squeeze an Alpine model in there somewhere.