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Information
Ariel Atom USA web site
This car is one of all time
Favorites in the world I just love everything about it!!!!!
From Car and Driver
The Ariel Atom 2 is by far the most
committed track car here. In his quest for lightness and speed,
the Atom's designer, Simon Saunders, left out the doors, the
windshield, the top, and even a sheetmetal skin. It's like a
two-seat formula car, and as the smallest and lightest in this
group, it was the quickest by a wide marginit catapulted to 60
mph in 3.0 seconds and was the fastest around the racetrack by
almost two seconds.
The Atom's speed comes with a generous dollop of styling, as
there are interesting details everywhere the eye falls. The
signature element is the powder-coated steel-tube frame and its
devilishly graceful curves that join the front and rear ends.
It's the automotive version of Nike's swoosh.
"Everyone wants to touch it," remarked Tom Smurzynski. The car,
that is. He's from Brammo Motorsports, the North American
builder of the Atom. Although the car was created in England
about seven years ago, most of the construction for North
American Atoms is done at the Brammo shop in Ashland, Oregon.
Those gorgeous steel tubes are precisely shaped in an automated
CNC tube bender. Brammo also fabricates the suspension, the
carbon-fiber fenders, and the fiberglass floor pan. There are
enough changes over the original that Brammo has christened its
car the "Atom 2." A base model starts at $41,995, and ours ran
almost 60 grand.
Mounted in the rear are the supercharged four-cylinder engine
and five-speed manual transmission from a Chevy Cobalt SS. The
engine is available in various horsepower levels, from 205 to
300. Ours had the 245-hp Stage 2 package.
Although we've never favorably compared the Cobalt engine's
noise and vibration characteristics with a Honda engine's, the
Chevy engine works fantastically in the Atom. The driver feels
little vibration, which is likely thanks to the engine's balance
shafts. The combination of supercharger whine and rorty exhaust
is satisfyingly sporty.
There's so much low-end grunt that around Buttonwillow we rarely
dipped below third gear. The Atom pulled fiercely at all rpm and
could invoke massive wheelspin at will. Although the gearbox
action is light, direct, and far slicker here than in a Cobalt,
we were glad not to have to shift often. Things happen at warp
speed in the Atomstraights evaporate, braking zones seemingly
last only a few yards, and the corners feel as if you were in a
centrifuge. We're used to far lazier responses than the Atom's,
and we all had difficulty keeping up, which made some of us call
the Ariel "nervous and twitchy."
We simply needed to acclimate. The Atom does what it's told, but
you have to be damn quick and sure with your instructions. Once
that was settled, we had joyous fun, passing the Z06 as if it
were a minivan.
Outright speed is only one of the Atom's charms. Othersincluding
watching the front suspension move, feeling the wind crawl up
your pant legs and assault your noggincould just as easily be
called annoyances, depending on your frame of mind. This car,
however, draws attention. The owner of our test car only uses it
for track days and thus had not registered it for street use (we
only drove it on the track), but we can easily imagine the
stares it would elicit on public roads. In an ever more
homogenized automotive landscape, there's nothing else like the
Atom. |
