What do you get when you bolt on an engine to some scaffolding and tyres? Before you get carried away, the answer is the Ariel Atom, a road legal track car that is capable of doing a 100 kmph in less than three seconds flat!
The brain child of Nick Smart for his student project back in 1996, the car has now seen three versions over the years with each one outrunning the last. The Ariel Atom (version one) started off with a two liter Honda engine and has grown up to become the Atom 3. I say grown up because the new Atom now comes with an added turbocharger- the secret behind its face distorting acceleration. Although theoretically you can break any record you wish to if you make the engine as big as possible and the body as light as possible, the key to a good track car is handling.
If your car can stay on the track and trace any path that isn’t a straight line while going fast then you have a winner. Having been tested by Lotus, known for their cars with nippy handling, the Atom has enough grip to take bits of the track with it.
All this said and done it might seem pretty pointless to move any further as the mains story has been told, but the actual story lies in the newest model in Ariel’s lineup, the Atom V8. With a five liter motorcycle derived, eight cylinder engine pumping out 500 bhp, the Atom V8 is a force to be reckoned with. What makes the Atom V8 so special is the level of technology that runs through it metaphorical veins. The gearbox can shift gears in 1/400ths of a second and you can preselect the next gear before changing them for even more speed.
The wheels are magnesium and the onboard computers can set the car up for each individual owner making it an engineering marvel. The Atom V8 sadly, despite the power: weight ratio of 900 hp per ton, it is not the fastest accelerating car in the world. That title belongs to the Bugatti Veyron, an engineering marvel that holds the title of fastest production road car. Capable of hitting speeds exceeding 430 kmph, it has a 16 cylinder, eight liter engine with four turbochargers bolted on.
The Veyron is designed not only for speed. What sets it apart from the Atom V8 is the fact that the Veyron is a GT car or a Grand Tourer. Decked up with leather, aluminium and the best sound system in the world to name a few, the Veyron is truly a benchmark for engineering design. Leaving technology aside, the unique thing that sets the Veyron apart is the cost of manufacture. Bugatti, a subsidiary of the Volkswagen group loses money on every Veyron sold. You may wonder what the point behind such lunacy is and the answer simply lies in the fact that to Ferdinand K. Piëch, the Chairman of VW felt that the Bugatti marquee must be returned to its past glory and the Veyron was his Everest.
No comments:
Post a Comment