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Nobody would have imagined being able to see this absolutely wonderfully insane piece of engineering/art on our roads, at least not in their lifetime. But a bunch of guys who really know how to be 10 years-old again have turned fantasy into reality. The Ariel Atom is finally here. |
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| 17 Dec 2008 | Text by Andy Hum, Photos by Adrian Wong |
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I had never thought anyone in this lifetime would think of manufacturing the road-legal version of a supernova. Here I was, sitting in a carbon-composite bucket seat, just a few inches from the ground without a roof over my head nor body panels to keep debris out.
Being strapped into something which produces 588 hp per tonne and as physically bare as this was definitely a new experience, to say the least.
A Bugatti Veyron, in comparison, only has 485 hp/tonne – that’s about 100 less than the Atom. Powering the little psycho is a supercharged 2.0-litre K20 Honda engine that produces 300 hp and 240 Nm of twist. It does 0-100 km/h in just 2.7 seconds and can put you through more than 1 g of lateral G-force while you’re getting out of the car park.
Forget about all your luxuries and whatnots. For S$288,000, you won’t be getting any radio, or cushioned seats, carpets, automatic headlamps or even air-conditioning because they weigh more than a gramme. And ABS, traction control and power steering systems were too girly, so those were excluded too. What you do get, is one gigantic lump of mind-blowing adrenaline rush every single time you merely shift your toes.
Getting from standstill to 160 km/h and back to zero takes just 11.50 seconds – astounding performance compared to 12.15 seconds by the highly-feared Porsche GT2. It even puts the Gallardo Superleggera – 13.05 seconds – to shame. But of course, it doesn’t even come with a dashboard for you to leave your sunglasses on. And if you want to drive one of these in a tropical island like Singapore, your name had better be Khoo Swee Chiow because when it rains, there’s no targa top to save you from the rain drops stinging your face.
So it’s not for the faint-hearted. The Atom is of an absolutely uncompromising pedigree, so much that, in fact, it wasn’t easy for its distributors to secure the rights to the Asian market.
Others have tried persuading the boys in Somerset, England to let them sell the cars here, but all of them have been turned away so far. And then a very serious group of investors came along. They have squadron call signs like “Black Sheep”, “Tsunami” and “Track Hawk” and after spending too much time watching Top Gear, as well as every single video of Ariel Atoms on the internet, they decided to knock on the Ariel’s door with an interesting proposition.
Look here, they said, sod the money-making. We want to get our people truly interested in motorsports. We’re talking about a Race Academy and getting motor racing to become a school activity. We’re very serious about growing the local motorsports culture.
Obviously, the whole idea won over the hearts and minds of the guys from Ariel and now, Atomic Racing will be selling not just Ariel’s fantastically insane cars, but Caterhams too.
At a price of S$288,000 for the road-legal version (S$160,000 for a track version), the Atom costs a little more than the revered Lotus Exige S, but simply has tonnes more bang-for-buck.
This really is a very, very serious car. When was the last time you saw an instrument cluster panel which allows you to adjust brake bias? Or traction control? Or even adjustable dampers which you didn’t even need to crawl or contort yourself just to reach?
Well, it’s all on this car.
As we write this, the distributors are in the midst of getting the car homologated for Singapore. Apparently, it’s just short of a windscreen and side mirrors, which, according to Atomic Racing’s bosses, aren’t very impossible to solve. Caterham’s monster, the R500, will also be seen on our roads pretty soon, once the authorities give the official green light.
And as for driving the Atom, Oliver Thomson, who is from UK and is the company’s Race Manager, had an unforgettable quote. After spending an entire day under the scorching sun, piloting the car around a large figure-of-8 course for more than 200 laps, he had this to say: “Back in UK, the temperature is minus one. Here, it’s 32 degrees. So if an Englishman can do it, anyone can!”
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