Recent reports claim that Renault, via its Alpine sub-brand, may return to the U.S. market sometime before the end of the decade. Those same reports note that Renault last sold cars here in the States in 1987, but that's a) not for lack of trying, and b) not really the case, considering U.S. car buyers have been buying Renaults almost the entire time since.

As Automotive News reported last week, Laurent Rossi, the CEO of Alpine, plans to increase the sub-brand's sales volume and product portfolio from the 3,500 Alpine 110s that it sold last year to more than 150,000 examples of at least three models by 2030. "We want to go to the U.S., which will create the bulk of the extra volume," he said. While Rossi has plans to introduce a small EV resurrecting the Renault 5 model name in Europe, his U.S. plans center around a midsize electric crossover and a larger electric crossover to be introduced sometime in 2027 or 2028.

The Automotive News article makes note of Renault's partial ownership of AMC that ended when Chrysler bought the latter in 1987 but also claims Renault models were last sold in the U.S. in the early 1990s. Both are true.

That's not to say Renault vanished entirely from the American market in the late Eighties. AMC and Renault had for several years been working on the Giugiaro-designed, Renault 25-based Premier full-size sedan, and pre-production prototypes were spotted with Renault badging.

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