![]() A couple of times I hook fifth instead of third going up the ’box, but I soon realise the gate is closely spaced and, much like the rest of the car, needs delicacy to get the best from it. The brakes are not only obviously powerful, but couldn’t be more perfectly weighted for heel-and-toe work, while the manual gearshift requires just one finger to guide it through. Years ago an Atom’s steering would weight up markedly in a turn, but the 4 is actually a very delicate machine to handle, requiring only carefully managed inputs to adjust its trajectory down a road. Meanwhile the slightly slower steering rack and longer wheelbase make the car less nervous. The driving position feels a little higher-set than a Caterham’s, but I find it very comfortable, the small aero screens more effective now at fending off turbulence. But it does mean I have the mental capacity left over to think about the rest of the experience. So configured, the Atom is still astonishingly quick, just without the ultimate venom that makes the world go a little bit weird. It dawns on me that the ‘nan’ setting still easily bests our Fast Fleet Caterham 310R, and that it may be a decent place to begin after all. ![]() Throttle response is sharp, if just a few per cent shy of the old car’s. Even wearing a full-face lid that release of pressure is astonishingly loud: the Atom soundtrack is no longer defined by roar or whine, but by that noise. And then KER-CHUMPF, as my foot comes off the accelerator pedal and boost pressure is expelled. Floor the throttle and the Atom quivers for a millisecond, as if you’ve connected the metal frame to the mains, before slamming forward with a ferocity that makes it difficult to focus on the vanishing point. There have been supercharged Atoms with nearly as much power in the past, but they haven’t mustered that savage stab of torque from such low revs. The result leaves me breathless, slightly disorientated and screaming expletives into the Nomex lining of my crash helmet. So, temps up to level, it’s time to see what the Type R’s blown four-pot feels like when I’m strapped inside a motorised children’s climbing frame with little else attached. Sure, the tubular-frame structure doesn’t have the slippery fuselage of a ’60s F1 car, but the spindly exposed wheels at each corner and minimalist ethos riff comprehensively off those vicious monoposto racers of half a century ago. ![]() The Atom 4 seems lower, sleeker, downright faster-looking than Atoms of yore, its blood-red airbox slicked back to better shepherd the air it’s ingesting, the slim snout of a nose now providing passage to the front-mounted radiator, much like the Lotus. A different world, full of bold, primary colours, larger-than-life characters and majestic but savagely unforgiving circuits.Īnd it’s the patriotically hued British Racing Green Lotus 49 Cosworth that springs to mind now, as I stand beside the new Ariel Atom 4, nearly 20 years after the first Atom appeared. That year was the second season of the ‘Return to Power’ 3-litre engines with serious horsepower, the last full season before the appearance of aerodynamic wings – and cars unsullied by sponsorship, too. A favourite motorsport VHS of mine back in the day was Nine Days in Summer, a Ford promo film that followed the introduction of the Cosworth DFV V8 into F1 during the 1967 season.
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