Drawing from the accounts of those who have driven the Ariel Aton 3.5R, we know it’s a handful of a car to drive fast, even on a bone dry surface, where, at low speed, it can snap into oversteer if the throttle is applied with too much enthusiasm on corner exit.
Make that track a soaking wet one, and the steering wheel can’t be held still for even a fraction of a second – it takes a lot of skill and concentration to drive the 3.5R in the wet, but it’s probably one of the great motoring experiences you can have with a road car on a circuit.
The EVO editor tasked with driving it found it to be a real hoot around a deeply, deeply marinated (and deserted for the day) Bedford Autodrome. It brings to mind the fact that modern cars aren’t really that evocative any more, yet the little Atom, with its aggressive no body-all chassis look and in your face spoilers really begs to be taken around each corner as quickly as possible, even if its tires are not suited for wet conditions and its spoilers don’t really do anything at low speeds. It’s what drivers in the 1930s must have felt like when they looked at one of the track-focused creations of their time.
The 3.5R comes with a supercharged Honda Civic Type-R engine, which has been tuned to produce 310 hp. It’s still considerably down on power compared to the Atom V8, but can still hit sixty in 2.5 seconds in the right conditions. This particular car also comes with the (ludicrously expensive) pneumatically-operated paddle-shift six-speed gearbox.
By Andrei Nedelea
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