There's suddenly a new sports car brand in Europe, and it's awesome

Renault has long teased the return of Alpine, its classic sports brand, first by creating a wild concept car for Sony's Gran Turismo racing simulator franchise. Now, it has something a little more concrete: the Alpine Vision, a concept car that hews "very close" to the inaugural model that it'll be selling starting next year.

This car is no joke. A mid-mounted turbocharged four promises 0-62 mph times under 4.5 seconds, which puts the Alpine Vision solidly in Porsche 718 Cayman territory — and if the company can come anywhere close to this concept's interior, they're in a good place. (The press materials claim that the Vision represents roughly 80 percent of the production car.) And it sounds like corporate parent Renault is giving Alpine a lot of latitude to execute on the project, calling it "an agile start-up" that is being led by its own team.

Alpine says we'll see the real car before the end of 2016 on its way to 2017 deliveries, starting in Europe before moving elsewhere. Wouldn't it be nice to see a few of these on American roads?