Going slightly mad

I am not going to spend time trying to justify myself here but suffice to say petrol is obviously running through my veins more than I previously imagined. The other weekend at 7 am I found myself in the car on my way down to Somerset in search of my next car. I had said to myself last year that I wasn’t allowed to think about cars until I had moved home, and so with the ink still wet on an offer for a new home (the previous Thursday), I was free to look.

I was, of course, just going to look at the car and maybe take it for a quick test drive. It would have been crazy for me to put down a deposit there and then especially when considering a car that barely meets that criteria. It is called the Atom made by the special people at Ariel Motors, who headed up by Simon Saunders was resurrected from the dead when it used to make Penny Farthings back in 1870 before focusing on motor bikes. The Atom was his brain child and one that has stunned car enthusiasts all over the world.

With no windscreen, doors, body panels, heater, radio, airbag, antilock brakes or alarm you have to look very hard to see it as a car. But what-a-car. With 300 bhp available from the supercharged Honda i-VTEC engine the car can sprint to 60 mph in less than 3 seconds! Quite intoxicating especially when sitting inches from the ground with full visibility of the wheels and suspension working in front of you. It has won Autocar’s 0 to 100 mph and back to 0 again competition three times on the trot, achieving it in 11.5 seconds.

So obviously I did what any self respecting petrol head would do and put down my deposit there and then. At least I have 16-months or so to wait until the car is built to justify my decision.