The people at Ariel will never get enough. The Ariel Atom 4 you can buy right now in the U.S. is fashioned from just enough parts to make a car road-legal and not one part more, so it weighs about 1,310 pounds. The driver and passenger barely get better accommodations than the turbocharged 2.0-liter K20 Honda four-cylinder engine behind the seats — that’s no insult to the Atom but praise for the philosophy. The engine makes 320 horsepower and 310 pound-feet of torque in standard spec, can be turned up to 350 hp., and gets the Atom from zero to 60 miles per hour in 2.8 seconds. These specs, clearly, scream for a faster and more powerful Atom 4R. Thank heavens, it’s here.
This time, the turbo K20 taken from the Civic Type R is jacked up to 400 hp. and 369 lb-ft. The numbers are made possible by redrawn intake geometry, vastly enhanced cooling thanks to a radiator in the new left sidepod and a larger air-to-air intercooler in the new right sidepod with 75% more surface area. Grunt runs through a new Quaife six-speed sequential gearbox with rev-blips on downshift. Paddles behind the wheel control a pneumatic gearchange system that works at full throttle and can swap five cogs in less than a second.
In attempt to make all this power approachable, boost can be adjusted in three stages, the ABS system gets 12 steps. When all the power has been mastered, the nannies can be turned off. Ariel hasn’t pegged hard figures, but some combination of programming cuts tenths of a second off acceleration times to 60 mph and 100 mph, which happen in less than 2.7 and 6.5 seconds, respectively. Top speed is listed as 170 mph, eight miles above the Atom 4.
The JRi adjustable pushrod dampers and Eibach springs have been traded for Ohlins TTX36 dampers ringed by Ohlins springs. Also out are the Brembos, in come AP Racing four-piston calipers clamping carbon ceramic discs. Combined with the carbon wheels, there’s 57 pounds combined that’s saved compared to the corners on a stock Atom 4. More carbon weave appears in the mudguards, airbox, headlight pods, and the panel that passes for a hood, as well as the new aerodynamics package developed with English firm TotalSim, which specializes in computational fluid dynamics.
An Ariel technician will build an Atom 4R by hand from beginning to end. Customers in the UK will be asked to pay a starting price of £64,950 plus tax ($85,000 U.S.) for the privilege. Ariel only brought 10 of the Atom 3R to the U.S., we hope the 4R is allowed to make more joy here.
