The phrase ‘it handles like a go-kart’ has a new meaning when it comes to the Ariel Atom. Some of you Top Gear fans, might remember Jeremy Clarkson’s facial distortion (about the 3:10 minute mark) while piloting this beast. And for those in the know, the performance of this car is already quite legendary. With some unreal numbers like 0-60 in under 3 seconds, the Atom is one fierce machine.
Up until last year, the Atom was only available in the UK. In 2008, the Ariel company contracted TMI Motorsports to be the sole distributor of the Atom in the U.S. On the way to America though, the car lost it’s Honda’s 2.0 liter 4 cylinder ‘K20′ engine and instead used the GM sourced 2.2 liter 4 cylinder ‘EcoTec’ engine. Since the end of 2008, Honda has graciously approved the sale of the K20 engines to Ariel for the U.S. market.
The big buzz for 2009 is that Ariel somehow stuffed a 500HP V8 in the Atom. The minimalistic vehicle weighs only around 1,100lbs. When the Atom was equipped with the supercharged K20 or the EcoTec (300HP), called Atom 300, it was already in the league of super-elite, exotic, supercar status. The Atom 500 (the V8 model) with 500HP, will be scary. Actually, they’ve stated that they are going after some world records.
Hopefully, we’ll get our hands on one of these pure awesomenesses soon and try not to kill ourselves…
-KF