Top Gear Ariel Atom Video
Top Gear covered the Ariel Atom 2, an ultra stripped down track car for the road (or a souped up go-kart, whichever way you want to look at it). It’s all praises, and you’d be suprised at the track test results at the end.
Short re-cap on what the Ariel Atom 2 is:
The Ariel Atom. This my friends, is not what Id consider a car. More like a Go-Kart. But its powered by a supercharged Honda K20 engine making 300 horsepower on a 456kg body. Madness? Yes. It is fast? YES!
This very light track car (or heavy go-kart) is powered by a Honda i-VTEC 2.0 engine making 220bhp at 8200rpm and 196Nm of torque at 6100rpm. It redlines at 8600rpm.
What makes it fast? Power to weight ratio of course. Lets compare. 300bhp for 456kg is roughly 600bhp per 1000kg? A Porsche 911 Carrera has 320bhp and weighs roughly 1350kg. Roughly 237bhp per 1000kg. You do the maths!
Video: Top Gear Ariel Atom
August 18, 2005 @ 3:54 pm
WoW! Not a surprise the car performing well.
August 19, 2005 @ 5:37 am
i wish i had one…
August 19, 2005 @ 9:51 am
that site has auto ads for 9.95 the next Auto Trader or Cars.com?? Stock is at .16 New trading too
August 19, 2005 @ 10:03 am
give me a choice between that car and the Honda Superbike, I will choose the bike.
:)
August 19, 2005 @ 3:05 pm
haha, the bike is 4 seconds behind the car maa… very slow at corners…
August 19, 2005 @ 4:06 pm
dear paul,
do you update your most popular list; seems mostly the same to me
by the way what the criteria, some transparency here….
August 19, 2005 @ 4:15 pm
YO PAUL,
is the echo coming to m’sia?
i heard from some car salesman that it is coming
his wife bothered him to buy the myvi and he told his wife the echo is coming and the price is around the same price for myvi is it true?
August 19, 2005 @ 4:38 pm
the Toyota Echo is badged as Toyota Vitz in some countries. Paul did a topic about the Vitz some time back. it is highly doubtful that it can be sold in the same pricerange as the Myvi
August 19, 2005 @ 8:46 pm
jet: I am using the Popularity Contest plugin for Wordpress available here. It calculates itself based on some factors like pageviews and comments etc.
stupdid rafidah: i blogged about the vitz here. dont think it will come to malaysia cheap. but we’ll never know… have to wait and see.
August 20, 2005 @ 12:20 pm
hi paul..which one eps is this?
August 23, 2005 @ 1:07 am
prefer the bike (Honda CBR600rr) rather than that Ariel go-cart toy. Too bad bout the price here though (60++K)..import taxes, what else!..err..do check out the suzuki GSXR K5…hmmm..tasty!
August 24, 2005 @ 1:04 pm
I think the Ariel is the coolest thing
Man, if I could afford one! Is it road legal here?
September 27, 2005 @ 11:06 pm
oh meh gawd….. liek, dat carr liek, pwn s teh noobs n stoff. Liek, omgawd. OOOOOOH. Wut tiill you sea meh, OH. If i wuz int distubingly obease id be havins one right nowz, noob. Id ride dat lil pwn E.
October 4, 2005 @ 7:47 am
Exciting, for a car. Car/bike “test” a bit unfair with a little 600cc bike. It they tried that with an off-the-showroom 2005 Kawasaki ZX-10 sportbike, 185hp/170kg vs Atom 300hp/456kg methinks the story at the track would be much different. Bye bye Atom in any of the straights. The Atom look quite a giggle tho, I’d have one please.
October 27, 2005 @ 10:13 pm
What a great toy!…Pitch it against a ZX10 or a CBR 1000 and I think we’d have a different story out of those corners. Wonder why they chose a 600?
November 10, 2005 @ 3:44 am
Wow ! what an amazing little car. I wish we could get them in Canada. And to all the bike lovers…a honda 600RR is not a superbike….its a starter bike. The Car still gets my vote.
November 24, 2005 @ 6:08 pm
To Steve.
CBR600RR a starter bike? 0-60 in less than 3.5 secs and a 160+mph top speed for beginners? Like to see a ’starter’ ride that how Honda intended!
Haw haw!!
December 14, 2005 @ 12:26 pm
first off, the bike is a RR typically meant for track, thats not always the case… stock.. just like the bike, and the car stock, equals 300bhp, however the bike itself being a 600rr has amazing handling and can corner like no other 1000cc bike.. besides the zx10r, 600’s are gp bikes, so therefore they’re raced at the track, however even if it was a 10r the car would still beat the bike by 3-4secs… only if the car had a ”professional driver”… u gotta remember to be handling that bike like that guy did.. you would haved to be professional.. so grab a 10r, or a Busa or a 12r for a matter of fact and line up both professional drivers and the car would still whoop the bikes ass… no doubt that motherfker is QUICK, i would choose that over my 10r anyday. Hm ” not the the price tho”
December 16, 2005 @ 12:39 am
The car would whoop any of the bikes mentioned at the track (PERIOD). The bikes just cant corner as well as the car.. sorry bike guys. Sure at the dragstrip the bikes might win but not in the twisties.
March 17, 2006 @ 6:50 pm
Racing a small 600 cc bike against a car that whooped ass off cars like Porches 911, Zonda on that particular track?? lol!!!
You see Mr Clarkson or Dr Clarkson as he likes to be called(The presenter in this program called Top Gear) is known to hate bikes by his own admittance and I mean HATE! He would do anything to pull a “stunt” like this! And its not the first time he has done this. Maybe he can’t help his prejudice against motorbikes??? And his refusal to grow up and move on in life! (or maybe he has had his arse kicked so many times by bikes that he cant help it) So that should explain why he raced a Small capacity 600 cc bike against a car that recorded The Fastest Lap in Top Gear on that particular circuit! if you had seen the full episode you would know what I am on about! Fair or not you decide!
Someone said here that 1000cc bikes are not as good in handling as 600 cc bikes, well weakest feature of a 600 cc bike is the out of corner speed, bike had a faster top speed compared to this car but not enough to catch up for the time lost on corners on the straights. 1000 cc bikes are quicker compared to 600 cc bikes when it comes to out of corner speeds as they have more torque! 1000 cc bikes have 60 to 70 hp more power they have quicker quarter miles and top speeds. And “NO†600 cc is not a super bike it’s a starter bike in super bikes even though it accelerates to 62mph in 3.2 sec.
The track is understandably very car biased as it was designed to test cars, still bike managed to out accelerate the car and in a drag race it was faster! But for a track like that as a whole, a 1000 cc bike would be more suitable. Even though at the end of the program they did admit that some might argue that with a more powerful bike, they might have had a different result! Still Mr Clarkson or Dr Clarkson as he likes to be called said and I quote “Rubbish I don’t have to wear a helmet in this car†nice logic mate! lolz
The reason why they didn’t race a 1000 cc bike was coz they would have had an outcome different to that of what Mr Clarkson wouldn’t have liked!
June 29, 2006 @ 2:38 pm
[...] Kimberley also hints that Lotus might be producing more tuned cars using donor cars by other manufacturers. Some Lotus-tuned donor cars are the Lotus Cortina based on a Ford Cortina and the recent Lotus Carlton based on the Vauxhall Carlton pictured above. I’m sure many of you remember what Lotus did to an old Lada Riva in an episode of Top Gear. If you’ve missed it, the video is available here. [...]
August 16, 2006 @ 12:11 am
Anyone saying this car is a “toy” has obviously never driven one (as Clarkson remarks). I have driven the 205hp version, and unlike the Lotus Elise, you don’t walk away from the experience having felt like you just drove a toy… it is far from it.
Additionally, its only inherent similarity to motorbikes is it’s light weight… This fact in turn gives it an incredible power to weight ratio, but unlike similar track day cars (Radical SR3, Caterham Blackbird, Westfield XTR2, etc.) it is not powered by a bike motor… like the video says, the engine is lifted from a Honda Civic Type R… and in the US, they’re making them with GM Ecotec 2.0L Supercharged (300hp/250ftlbs) engines.
I have nothing against bikes, but this car will destroy any bike in a technical track setting… it will out-brake and out-corner anything on two wheels… think about the contact patches and the double unequal length wishbone suspension… it’s just physics.
Would I recommend it for a daily driver? Obvoiusly not… It’s lack of weather protection and windscreen make that quite unrealistic. But unlike similar cars of its kind (and motorcycles for that matter), it isn’t the sort of thing I’d designate soley for the weekends/short trips.. You have the feeling like you can go anywhere in one, and unlike most “toys,” it’s not something you easily get tired of and want to stop “playing” with.
So uh, someone wanna lend me 50K?
September 19, 2006 @ 2:39 pm
[...] First of all, the engine. To put it into the same league as the BMW M5, the new Audi S8 has been equipped with an engine similiar to the Lamborghini Gallardo’s 5.0 liter V10 engine that makes 450bhp of power and 540Nm of torque. This is comparable to the BMW M5’s V10 which makes 400hp in normal mode and 507hp in M-mode. This lightweight engine weighs only 220kg, about 20kg less than equivalent competitors. The Audi S8 itself is only 1940kg in total weight. While the power to weight ratio is not as astounding as the Ariel Atom 2, it’s still good. [...]