The 12 best colours from Alpine's new Atelier collection

Isn't that satisfying to look at? Like a packet of Alpine A110-shaped Skittles scattered across a tiled floor. Or a bumper pack of toy French sports cars just waiting to be ripped open.

What it actually is? Why, it's only Alpine's new 'Atelier' collection of colours. See, the A110 comes with a limited band of colours as standard. Blue, darker blue, white, grey, black. Good news for resale values of actual buyers, bad news for those of us with no money who like playing with online configurators.

We're therefore delighted, as proud members of the latter party, to share with you Alpine's new Atelier personalisation scheme, and its 29 heritage colours - each with an appropriate level of heritage - which you can now spec. Limited to 110 cars each, they're all pictured above, but if you've nothing better to do (and we suspect you haven't) click for a virtual tour of our dozen favourites...

Sanguine means 'optimistic or positive, especially in an apparently bad or difficult situation'. Is there really any other colour choice right now?

'Garden Green', to those of us with poor French GCSE results. This was only available on Alpines made between 1975 and 1977. Until now...

'Black Tulip' has appeared on only five Alpines in history. And just the one emoji, too. We all know the one.

This one launched with the glorious Alpine A310 in the Seventies. 'Cos what's more Seventies than a BROWN CAR?

Hands up if vanilla ice cream is your favourite flavour. If your palm is currently aloft (and regularly cleaned, we hope), then you are correct. Celebrate by matching your weeny French sports car to the simplest but most delightful of dessert choices.

We love a green car at TG, and 'Emerald Green' is a particularly fist-biting hue. It featured on the 1974 Alpine A110 1600 SI rally car, too. Even better.

Looking not unlike Porsche's 'Crayon', but with a significantly more enticing name, this is the colour worn by the very first Alpine A110 sold in 1963. This is history.

And here's the colour worn by the last A110 to roll out of Dieppe in 1977. That car was ordered by an Alpine engineer who nicknamed the hue 'berliverte'.

Hold the front page, the really big story of our times is you can now buy a pink Alpine. We really, really like this, too.

Or 'Peacock Blue' in English. Because sports cars are all about peacocking down the high street, right?

We're not sure we need to offer a translation on this one...

Blue is the colour of Alpine A110s, but don't give this one a swerve in an effort to be different: it's a subtly different hue to all those A110s you saw online a couple of years ago. This is the same blue worn by Gordini-tuned Renaults throughout history.

Oh, and before you head over to the Atelier configurator, know that you can also play with wheels and brake calipers too. It's like they knew offices and schools were closing and we'd need something to fill our days with.

Tell us how you'd have yours below...