Born in 1965 -- the same year as Chris -- Alpine Club was one of 13 machines released that year by Williams Mfg. Only 1,200 units were produced, making it the lowest production run of any Williams replay machine in that year.
It was highly innovative for its time, with a complex set of scoring features. It was among the first Williams machines to have a single ball and ball counter stepper (earlier machines had 3 or 5 balls that had to be manually lifted to the shooter trough). The ball return gate feature was seen on very few machines through the 1980's. It also featured all stainless steel trim, replacing earlier chromed trim, which had a tendency to flake off over time. As a base on which to build the Love Machine, it could hardly be improved upon.
The only real deficiency was that, as an older machine, it used bells instead of the beautiful 3-tone chimes that became common during the 1970's. This was easily addressed: in the end, I kept the 1-point bell (on the match unit), and installed a 3-tone chime for the 10-point relay, the 100-point relay, and the Anniversary Bonus advance stepper. Ka-ching!