The 300-mile test
ARIEL ATOM 4R
Normal logic does not apply where Ariel is concerned. With the 4R, doubly so
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There’s no outside temperature read-out on the Ariel’s solitary display, but I don’t need a thermometer to confirm what my body is screaming at me – that the biting December cold is no stranger to this beautiful yet frigid corner of South Wales. Rather, they’re on first name terms and I’ve just crashed their little get-together in the most inappropriate car possible.
Why? Honestly, I’m asking myself the same thing at this point. It was my idea – I think – or at least CAR editor Ben Miller made me believe as much, but the original discussion went a bit like this. Anyone can drive Ariel’s latest hardcore Atom 4R on a sun-kissed circuit in the middle of summer and declare it the bee’s knees, but what happens when you split the Atom from its comfort zone? It’s legal for the road (or it will be once we glue the front number plate back on), but is it simply too much for the road?
Let’s start by looking at the basics. The Atom 4R is a hardcore version of the Atom 4. That’s a car few would consider to be soft, yet this is Ariel we’re talking about – the same company that once put a 500bhp V8 in a car that weighed less than 600kg, so normal logic does not apply. The leap from 4 to 4R isn’t quite that extreme, but there’s definitely some form of insanity coursing through the 4R’s exposed exoskeleton.
Cutting through the half-light of the early-morning traffic in the old mining town of Abercynon, the Atom 4R stands out like an Indycar at an Armstrong Siddeley convention. A low-slung tub festooned with wings and pods aplenty, it looks for all the world like ChatGPT has been asked to create a road-legal cruise missile with two seats and indicators. Not for amoment would I call it pretty, but boy does it have presence.
And power. The Ariel-tuned 2.0-litre i-VTEC Honda Civic Type R engine’s outputs increase from 320bhp and 310lb ft of torque to 400bhp and 369lb ft. In a car weighing 700kg, that means a power-to-weight ratio of 571bhp per tonne – better than a Ferrari 296 GTB. Ariel has managed to extract this additional performance thanks to new intake geometry and a redesigned cooling system that features an additional radiator in the left pod. Meanwhile, the pod on the right gets a larger intercooler that increases the car’s intercooling area by 75 per cent.
Three different engine-map settings allow the driver to select just how much they want their stomach churned, while a new (optional) six-speed sequential gea
