There's something almost against the rules about what Carlos Henrique Brito did. The man, identified as an automotive designer affiliated with Groupe PSA — the French side of Stellantis — went ahead and cooked up an unsolicited concept for a completely different company. Not just any company, either. He designed a rugged off-road SUV for Alpine, which sits squarely in the Renault camp. In the corporate world of European automaking, that's roughly the equivalent of a Ford engineer sketching a Chevy in his spare time and posting it online for the world to see.
And yet, here we are. Because the concept he came up with is genuinely hard to ignore.
Car Design World, a well-followed automotive design community on social media, brought attention to the project. Once people started digging into Brito's Behance profile under the handle 'carlos_h_brito', the backstory got interesting fast. But honestly, the drama of who designed what for whom fades away pretty quickly once you get a look at the actual vehicle he put together.
Alpine: A Brand With More History Than Most People Realize
Before getting into the concept itself, it's worth understanding what Alpine actually is, because a lot of American drivers may not have a firm handle on the brand.
Alpine was founded in France back in 1955. For decades it was a niche outfit, best known for the A110 — a lightweight, nimble sports car that made a name for itself in the 1960s and 1970s, particularly in rally racing. The car was quick, it was French, and it had a devoted following among people who cared about driving dynamics over straight-line speed.
Then Alpine went quiet for a long time. It wasn't until 2017 that Renault brought the brand back in a serious way, repositioning it as a premium sports and performance label under the Renault umbrella. The revival A110 carried the same name as the original and captured much of the same spirit — rear-engined, lightweight, focused. It was well received.
Since then, Alpine has been expanding rapidly. The lineup now includes the A290, a hot hatchback built on the bones of the Renault 5 E-Tech electric platform, and the A390, a compact all-electric crossover riding the AmpR Medium platform — the same architecture shared with vehicles from Renault, Nissan, and Mitsubishi. The brand is pushing hard into electrification.
The bigger picture is even more ambitious. Alpine has plans to introduce no fewer than seven models by 2030. Most of them will be fully electric. There are also reports of Renault planning a return to the North American market through the Alpine nameplate, potentially bringing a mid-size electric crossover and a larger electric SUV somewhere around 2027 or 2028. For American buyers, that's not far off.
None of those planned models, however, appear to include a purpose-built off-road machine. That's exactly the gap Brito decided to fill on his own time.
What Brito Actually Built — In Pixels
The concept Brito created is a two-door SUV, and it pulls its visual inspiration directly from two of Alpine's most storied nameplates — the A110 and the A310. Both were sports cars, both were low-slung and aerodynamically conscious, and neither had any business being referenced in a vehicle designed to crawl over rocks and tear through dirt. That tension is exactly what makes this concept so interesting.
The front end grabs attention immediately. Brito went with a split headlight design that combines horizontal LED strips with circular daytime running lights. The main lighting units appear to be pixel-LED setups, which gives the face of the thing a technical, almost aggressive look. It's modern without being generic, and it reads as Alpine without copying anything Alpine has actually built.
The body is extremely wide. Not just SUV-wide, but closer to the width you'd associate with a side-by-side ATV — the kind of machine people take out to the desert or through mountain trails on weekends. That extreme width communicates purpose. This isn't a crossover that happens to have all-terrain tires slapped on for marketing photos. The proportions suggest something built to actually handle difficult terrain.
The profile shows a coupe-style roofline, which is a bold choice for something this tall and aggressive. Strip away the massive ride height, the chunky wheels, the all-terrain rubber, and the roof rack loaded with storage boxes, and there's a recognizable coupe silhouette underneath. It's a design trick that works surprisingly well here, giving the vehicle a sense of sportiness even when it's clearly set up for punishment.
The rear of the concept is where things get really interesting from a design standpoint. Brito gave it almost no rear bumper and an extremely short overhang — the kind of rear end you'd associate with a Baja racing buggy rather than anything meant for a showroom. It looks like the back of a vehicle built to escape whatever it just drove through.
And then there's the powertrain question.
The Detail That's Going to Start Arguments
Alpine has been very public about its commitment to electric vehicles. The A290 is electric. The A390 is electric. The majority of the seven models planned through 2030 are expected to be electric. The brand's identity, at least in its current form, is increasingly tied to battery power.
Brito's concept doesn't seem to care about any of that.
The design includes a slim, wide air intake at the front of the vehicle — the kind of opening that exists to feed air to a combustion engine, not to cool a battery pack. At the back, there's a set of wide exhaust outlets centered in the middle of the rear bumper area. That's a combustion or hybrid signature, full stop.
Whether Brito was imagining a traditional internal combustion setup, a plug-in hybrid, or some kind of performance-oriented hybrid system isn't spelled out anywhere. There's no written brief accompanying the images, no powertrain specs, no explanation. The visual cues speak for themselves, and what they say is that this concept wasn't designed to be whisper-quiet on a charging cable.
That decision — whether intentional provocation or simply a design choice driven by aesthetics — is going to divide opinion. For drivers who have been skeptical of the push toward full electrification in performance and off-road vehicles, those exhaust pipes are going to look like a statement. For others, it might seem like a step backward for a brand trying to plant its flag in the EV space.
Why This Concept Lands the Way It Does
What Brito pulled off here, unofficial and unsolicited as it is, is a coherent vision for a corner of the market that Alpine hasn't touched. A proper off-road Alpine — something with real capability, real presence, and a design language that connects back to the brand's sports car heritage — is not an obvious idea. It takes some imagination to get there.
The execution doesn't feel random. The split headlights, the coupe silhouette, the references to the A110 and A310 — those aren't arbitrary choices. Someone who knows the brand and respects what it's historically stood for made those decisions. The fact that the person making them technically works for a rival company makes the whole thing a little stranger, but it doesn't make the work any less considered.
There's no interior shown. There are no performance numbers. There's no indication this will ever be anything beyond digital renderings made by a guy who apparently couldn't stop himself from imagining what an Alpine off-roader might look like. In the world of CGI automotive design, that's not unusual. Concepts like this live and die on the strength of the idea and the execution of the visuals.
On both counts, Brito delivered something worth paying attention to.
What Comes Next — If Anything
The honest answer is probably nothing. Alpine has a full product roadmap already. The company is deep into the electric transition, expanding into new markets, and managing the launch of multiple new models simultaneously. There's no indication anyone at Renault or Alpine has seen this concept, let alone considered it for anything beyond a social media moment.
But automotive history is full of examples where an outside concept, an unsolicited sketch, or a viral rendering changed the conversation around what a brand could or should build. Consumer appetite shapes product decisions, and when enough people respond to an idea the same way, companies tend to notice.
An Alpine off-road SUV with combustion or hybrid power, extreme width, rally-inspired styling, and a roof rack full of gear is the kind of vehicle that would make a lot of noise in the American market — particularly for buyers who find current electric crossovers a little too tame and a little too similar to each other.
Whether or not that vehicle ever gets built, Brito's concept made one thing clear: the idea has legs.
